Close combat (or lack of it)

[Bulletpoint]

Maybe the purpose of gladiators and mass murder in the arena was not only to entertain the people, but also desensitivise young men to violence so that they would make better soldiers?

Edited October 1, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[DerKommissar]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

Maybe the purpose of gladiators and mass murder in the arena was not only to entertain the people, but also desensitivise young men to violence so that they would make better soldiers?

Gladiators were owned by Gladiator schools and were expensive investments. They trained together to put on a display worthy of paying crowds and to reduce the risk of injury. A lot of the audience were wealthy, and a significant portion were women.

I'm sure many boys watched the fights, on their parents' dime. Yet, I doubt they would get desensitized any more than watching a crucifixion, or seeing animals disemboweled at a temple. Watching the Legions train would probably give them more applicable skills (discipline and fitness), than Roman WWE.

[Bulletpoint]

46 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

Gladiators were owned by Gladiator schools and were expensive investments. They trained together to put on a display worthy of paying crowds and to reduce the risk of injury. A lot of the audience were wealthy, and a significant portion were women.

I'm sure many boys watched the fights, on their parents' dime. Yet, I doubt they would get desensitized any more than watching a crucifixion, or seeing animals disemboweled at a temple. Watching the Legions train would probably give them more applicable skills (discipline and fitness), than Roman WWE.

The gladiator combat was only part of the killing in the arena. Lots of convicts and prisoners of war were killed outright there, in various creative ways.

[Erwin]

Good times...

[Bufo]

18 hours ago, Erwin said:

Interesting point.  My parents survived WW2 Eastern Europe, lived in camps and were refugees.  But, so were all their displaced person friends and it was "normal" for them.  Based on my recollections there is no doubt that today they would both have been diagnosed with PTSD.  

I think PTSD is only when you act abnormally. Just the fact that you suffered some stress - including extreme and combat - does not mean that now you will have PTSD.

One good example is a guy I read about in my country who had been locked away by his family in the barn because occasionally he would attack anybody on sight and he was "constantly making noises and acting like an animal". And he lived there for years, can't remember how it ended.  At that time there were no facilities or program or whatever to deal with these.

This is after WW1. Not every returning soldier had to be locked away...

 

Edit: I just read that it was normal at that time that their own families locked away these guys.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Bufo

[Erwin]

FWIW:
https://www.ptsduk.org/what-is-ptsd/who-is-affected-by-ptsd/refugees/

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30051-3/fulltext

Depending on the sample, the rates of PTSD vary widely within any given refugee population, with prevalence rates ranging from 4% to 86% for PTSD and 5% to 31% for depression (6).

Also re transmission of trauma thru generations:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6127768/

Perhaps the real question is does PTSD exist only cos someone put a label on it.  There has been such an explosion of medical "problems" in the past 50-75 years.  Maybe it's all driven by "Big Pharma" and its desire to sell us a pill for ever increasing numbers of problems?

Edited October 2, 2020 by Erwin

[Howler]

5 hours ago, Erwin said:

Perhaps the real question is does PTSD exist only cos someone put a label on it.  There has been such an explosion of medical "problems" in the past 50-75 years.  Maybe it's all driven by "Big Pharma" and its desire to sell us a pill for ever increasing numbers of problems?

Or, it may be caused by the marked downward trend in violence these past 500 years... The rate of violent crime is lower today than at any other time.

Or, we can blame "Big Pharma" for that too.

[Erwin]

2 minutes ago, Howler said:

marked downward trend in violence these past 500 years...

 

You mean like WW2, the Holocaust...

also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/why-human-society-isn-t-more-or-less-violent-past

[Howler]

Yes @Erwin , what we have is road rage and not as much dueling, knifing, shooting, punching, raping, etc. on our streets.

We've gone from fighting world wars every twenty years to much smaller police actions these past 70 years.

It's too easy to simply attribute it to "Big Pharma".

Anyhow, this has nothing to do with the original topic so I'll desist.

[markshot]

I think we can agree that BFC has made its signature realism both in software agent modeling and graphics/sound.

Be that the case, I think the modeling CQB is far more difficult than death from shelling and small arms fire.

I play modded RTW1, MTW2, STW2, and mainly these day RTW2.  Modded STW2 and RTW2 look absolutely beautiful.  But if you get down to 3rd. person eye level, the animations at a group level are terrible.  And technically, this should not be melee, but formation engagements.  Trench fighting is melee.  Modern troops had neither mail or plate armor, nor swords, spears, falx, war axes, etc...

As the CM games are about HE, kinetic kills, and small arms.  I would rather see BFC spend 10,000 hours in improving that than getting melee to look better than Total War.

(back on topic)

[Sgt.Squarehead]

7 hours ago, markshot said:

I play modded RTW1, MTW2, STW2, and mainly these day RTW2.  Modded STW2 and RTW2 look absolutely beautiful.  But if you get down to 3rd. person eye level, the animations at a group level are terrible.

Same here & I quite agree.

Edited October 3, 2020 by Sgt.Squarehead

[chi-chi]

I think many folks are too focused on how close combat can look cinematic. Combat Mission games look decent but they've not been competitively "good looking" for nearly 5 years, if not more. What they are is good looking for a wargame and that is the bare minimum they need to be and so far they are clearing that bar. I mentioned earlier that it could CC could be tied to the action square & a simple update on the unit ticket (bottom left) saying "close combat" would be sufficient and avoid any unsightly animations while also allowing the players imagination to fill in the gaps.

Earlier some folks mentioned the CC is indeed rare and while I agree its rare I also think it would be worthwhile to sim in Combat Mission since CM tends towards focusing on determined attacks. Essentially its would end up being more common in CM because CM is almost constantly representing relatively rare events. In the context of a relatively rare event there is no need for any animations for the system. In fact additional animation work to make men more realistically take cover or hunker down when in vehicles would be a much better use of time since that directly impacts the effectiveness of cover/vehicles.

[John1966]

1 hour ago, chi-chi said:

I mentioned earlier that it could CC could be tied to the action square & a simple update on the unit ticket (bottom left) saying "close combat" would be sufficient and avoid any unsightly animations while also allowing the players imagination to fill in the gaps.

Absolutely. I'm not really interested in animations for CC. It'd just be nice if it "happened", even if it's only abstracted. Because we all know that in the scenarios we play, the circumstances where it arises are quite common.

[Howler]

5 hours ago, John1966 said:

Absolutely. I'm not really interested in animations for CC. It'd just be nice if it "happened", even if it's only abstracted. Because we all know that in the scenarios we play, the circumstances where it arises are quite common.

I must be either (un)lucky or playing wrong because by the time my assault team gets to grenade throwing range (30m) - there's not much left of the defender that isn't dead, wounded, cowering, or surrendering.

Granted, 80% of my play is with the modern titles. YMMV.

[SimpleSimon]

1 hour ago, Howler said:

I must be either (un)lucky or playing wrong because by the time my assault team gets to grenade throwing range (30m) - there's not much left of the defender that isn't dead, wounded, cowering, or surrendering.

Granted, 80% of my play is with the modern titles. YMMV.

You're doing it right. 

Edited October 4, 2020 by SimpleSimon

[Sgt.Squarehead]

1 hour ago, Howler said:

I must be either (un)lucky or playing wrong because by the time my assault team gets to grenade throwing range (30m) - there's not much left of the defender that isn't dead, wounded, cowering, or surrendering.

Err.....Use two teams maybe?

Pin 'em & pummel 'em.....What's not to like?

[John1966]

4 hours ago, Howler said:

I must be either (un)lucky or playing wrong because by the time my assault team gets to grenade throwing range (30m) - there's not much left of the defender that isn't dead, wounded, cowering, or surrendering.

Granted, 80% of my play is with the modern titles. YMMV.

I'm always playing WWII and I always seem to be in a hurry. 

[Lethaface]

10 hours ago, John1966 said:

I'm always playing WWII and I always seem to be in a hurry. 

Use more artillery :).

[chi-chi]

Again its really going to depend on which titles you play, which scenarios you play, and some playstyle determinations.

I've made this complaint before but it does happen that my men end up fighting enemy troops who were cowering and recovered in the same action square because they ignore them.

[John1966]

2 hours ago, chi-chi said:

I've made this complaint before but it does happen that my men end up fighting enemy troops who were cowering and recovered in the same action square because they ignore them.

Is this a thing I noticed for the first time last night?

Some nearby buildings had some Germans in it who I noticed weren't returning any fire. They'd been pumping it out like nobody's business beforehand so I guessed they'd run out of ammo. So I ran some guys in. Despite the fact that they'd spotted the occupants, they ignored them and started firing elsewhere! To get them to shoot at the Germans in the same building and no more than six feet away, I had to give them a target command.

If they'd ascertained they were no threat then that sort of makes sense but I doubt the AI makes assessments like "have they run out of ammo?" and to ignore enemy soldiers (who had not surrendered) occupying the same space as you doesn't seem realistic. Especially considering that in RL they might come at you with a knife or similar.

[Bulletpoint]

On 10/4/2020 at 8:55 PM, John1966 said:

Despite the fact that they'd spotted the occupants, they ignored them and started firing elsewhere! To get them to shoot at the Germans in the same building and no more than six feet away, I had to give them a target command.

If they'd ascertained they were no threat then that sort of makes sense but I doubt the AI makes assessments like "have they run out of ammo?" and to ignore enemy soldiers

Not sure about infantry,but at least tanks magically know when an enemy tank has its main gun disabled, and they then stop firing at that tank. This is useful for the player, but not very realistic.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[markshot]

This may be an extension that in both series, you were never allowed to intentionally shoot at prisoners.  So, perhaps cowering is a limbo state, since maybe the next state is surrender.  And maybe no one would reach surrender if they were to be shot while cowering.

But the problem of cowering is cowering with a weapon handy.  However, in order to resolve that, capturing prisoners needs to cease being an abstraction, and actually involve time away from combat to disarm, search, and restrain.

[Bulletpoint]

4 hours ago, markshot said:

This may be an extension that in both series, you were never allowed to intentionally shoot at prisoners.

You can gun down surrendering enemies if you choose to. I don't, but the engine allows it.

(well, you can't officially target them, but you can area fire on them)

Edited October 6, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[John1966]

13 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

(well, you can't officially target them, but you can area fire on them)

To be fair, you can do that to your own guys too. 

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, John1966 said:

To be fair, you can do that to your own guys too. 

Not with small arms.