... a constructive simulation called Combat Mission, showed that civilian gamers with no military training outperformed military officers with years of experience

[Pete Wenman]

P

[The_MonkeyKing]

1 hour ago, Pete Wenman said:

P

Haha, I would not be surprised that dedicated wargamers outperform career military officers in lab like environment. Like CM. 

Unfortunately for us wargamers probably 95 percent of the officers job is something totally different than what wargamers do. Leadership, making decisions, human relations, stress Management, logistics and the like.

I am sure an officer who knows nothing about military equipment or tactics but excels in the other subjects I mentioned will make a close to a perfect officers. (with tactics he would know to trust his subordinates)

[Glubokii Boy]

CM is a GAME ! RL is RL...

Not exactelly the same thing...

[Warts 'n' all]

I've no idea who Iain McNeil is, but I bet he's never done this... 

 

[Vacillator]

I'm guessing by the username that Iain is at Slitherine?  He is however quoting Modern War Institute, who I have also never heard of .

[Apocal]

I have no problem believing that guys who play computer wargames regularly do better at CM than military professionals.

But I think the implication in that article is reaching a bit. There is no end to the dumb **** I do while playing CM -- suicide scouting, shooting machine guns over and around my own troops, driving armor over my dismounts in a heavy undergrowth forest, etc. -- that I'd never even consider doing IRL for good reasons. Playing the game as a game, and not as an actual exercise or operation, certainly opens up the possibilities for clever tactics but I'm skeptical that it correlates to doing better in the real deal.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Apocal

[chuckdyke]

40 minutes ago, Apocal said:

but I'm skeptical that it correlates to doing better in the real deal.

Omaha beach we could make a map of that size.  0.5 km by 8 km. Real life run by a West Point graduate and a Sandhurst graduate and defended by a graduate of the Officer Cadet School in today's Gdansk. All with active combat experience. 2500 KIA on the end of the day German losses are unknown. What was achieved we would regard as tactical victory as they occupied some of the objectives. CM never made a scenario for it. 

[Warts 'n' all]

10 hours ago, Vacillator said:

I'm guessing by the username that Iain is at Slitherine?  .

I did notice that. But, when someone throws something up it is frightfully ill mannered not to hit it. I was tempted to post the whole match, but thought that might be considered a tad excessive, so we just get a picture of Billy Mc.

[Thewood1]

Its probably more a matter playing the game, not fighting the battle that matters most.  Real life things that don't translate well in CM like finding good hull down for a tank.  A CM player who has play for years knows a lot of the little command nuances and what they really mean.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Thewood1

[Bulletpoint]

The comparison is flawed, because a real military commander gives orders to intelligent human subordinates and then trusts them to carry out those orders. But playing a game, the player gives orders directly to units. With experience, the player will learn how to micromanage and get the best result from the quirks in the user interface. It's not enough to select a platoon and give them an "attack" order.

In order to better test military commanders VS gamers, neither should play the game hands-on, but give general orders to a "middle man" who would then translate those orders into actual movement commands etc.

[Halmbarte]

I suspect the biggest difference is in communication. As a player I have a plan in my head and the plan and any changes are communicated perfectly to my units. 

Nobody who works with actual humans would think this is the case in real life. 

H

[chuckdyke]

17 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:

As a player I have a plan in my head and the plan and any changes are communicated perfectly to my units. 

Not necessarily if you take the C2 structure seriously. Only permit orders when you see your tentative contacts have been passed on. 

[Halmbarte]

10 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Not necessarily if you take the C2 structure seriously. Only permit orders when you see your tentative contacts have been passed on. 

If the tac AI was better at not being a complete dunce that would be more of a thing. As is I have to micromanage berm drills, reaction to contact, and so forth. 

H

[chuckdyke]

5 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:

As is I have to micromanage berm drills, reaction to contact, and so forth. 

H

Different players, different play styles. 

[Erwin]

This is not really new news.  We played wargames vs military professionals back in the day (15-20- years ago) when my company was designing games for DoD and gamers regularly beat the milpros.  Yet it is ludicrous to conclude that means that the gamers would make better commanders.  The reason is that these are games and simply do not have the fidelity to accurately depict the complexities of war, and also, as gamers we can play vs the game system(s) better than the less experienced at playing games milpros.  Even on these forums I vaguely recall one of the frequent poster milpros post that he doesn't play the game much.  Playing a lot of games simply makes you very good at playing the games due to a better understanding of the game system.

[Apocal]

5 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Not necessarily if you take the C2 structure seriously. Only permit orders when you see your tentative contacts have been passed on. 

Even then, the level of micromanagement CMx2 allows (indeed, even requires in many scenarios) is something no real world commander can attempt, short of corralling men within shouting and pointing distance. That makes a lot of a professional's training and experience void because in real battles, they give relatively few, but (in CMx2 terms) incredibly broad orders to their subordinates, who in turn take their understanding of those orders (not necessarily what was intended!) and use that to generate further orders below. That goes on down the chain until a mission for a mech battalion to secure a main supply route against infiltration becomes a company team ordered to clear and occupy a town astride the route, which in turn goes to Stryker platoon to take a particular block, a machine squad to setup in and fortify a certain building and finally the individual gun team leader to hold down a long angle in order to protect the rest of the battalion, directing his gunner when to employ grazing fire.

All this is done semi-automatically in the real deal, each step capable of managing itself and not needing to be handheld*. Even in the most top-down, micromanaged forces, staffs don't tend to nitpick employment of every individual vehicle and weapon team -- especially not in real time. The bigger struggle of battle command is elsewhere, and doesn't necessarily make for an interesting game: "How do I write this OPORD in a way that everyone will understand my plan while still being succinct?"

All that said, CMx2 can certainly be used to develop good insights and wargame out plans to see where some of the failures might happen in any given plan. It is good for reinforcing fundamentals and getting a better appreciate for the variables that might affect a given matchup. I just don't think that skill in playing CMx2 would be indicative of skill at commanding troops in combat.

 

*Yeah, yeah, I know a bunch of other BTDTs are going to have some laughs and, yeah, I'm right there with you but when echelons removed from reality are reaching down from the heavens and into your ear, we all agree that isn't supposed to happen much.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Apocal

[Artkin]

4 hours ago, Erwin said:

due to a better understanding of the game system.

This is exactly why the gamers did better. If you applied real military tactics to CM I'm sure they would work really well. You would have a much more balanced game with consistently better results.

[MikeyD]

Longtime CM players tend to forget just how basic the initial learning curve was. Don't march across an open field into the teeth of a mg nest. Don't speed forward without scouting the route first. Keep terrain features between yourself and the enemy.  Suppress suppress suppress! CM has the advantage of teaching the basics without getting anyone killed. Think about the Russian army at the start of the war. They were consistently committing tactical sins the most basic CM newbie would have known to avoid. There's an advantage to having learned from your mistakes 'virtually' first.

[chuckdyke]

4 hours ago, Apocal said:

I just don't think that skill in playing CMx2 would be indicative of skill at commanding troops in combat.

I never said that what CM has in common with the military is that of a sandbox. Our panel (F5-F8 on windows) is the administration panel, I just suggest respecting it. The manual falls short explaining all the commonsense orders. This is where this forum comes in. Positioning snipers in buildings without going on balconies exposing themselves, splitting units inside IFVs and APCs are a few of them it took me a long-time trial and error to find that out. Having an Elite Unit going on a two-lane highway where one of his squads just have been wiped out while you plotted a movement through the back alleys is in my view definitely a bug. Try to explain those things to the administrators and you will soon get the reputation of being a troll. Kind regards and happy gaming. 

[MikeyD]

You're whining about things at the margins. According to articles and posts circulating around, the British Ministry of Defence is apparently as happy as can be with CM Pro. Why would they be that happy with a 'fundamentally flawed' simulation?

[chuckdyke]

9 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

the British Ministry of Defence is apparently as happy as can be with CM Pro.

A game we can't buy, they probably needed to polish the margins. Yes, I can split my units inside vehicles in the setup zone. Why is this not explained in the manual? Here we are accused of whining. Pathfinding also needs to be polished at the margins. This forum is about communications of how things could be improved. Not about trolling comments we don't like.

[Hapless]

I had a much longer rambling post, but gave up on it, so TLDR:

How many tactical decisions does a junior officer make in a year? Not a lot. Exercises are expensive and time consuming, training objectives must be met, freeplay is rare, scripting is prevalent.

vs

How many tactical decisions do you make in an average CM game? How many do you make in an average CM turn? All that micromanagement from battalion to fire team level? Endless tactical decision making.

Naturally, decision-making and execution are very, very different. And CM is by no means 100% realistic. But it's probably realistic enough, especially integrated into a full on professional military syllabus. If nothing else, it's a lot safer and cheaper to 'fail forward' in CM than it is on exercise or- God forbit- the real deal.

[chuckdyke]

Interesting article, yes warfare is conducted with satellite communication. The computer screen will make real warfare and artificial warfare merge into one. Will be some time before this is achieved. Instead of reading countless books knowledge can be acquired by playing games. 

[A Canadian Cat]

7 hours ago, Hapless said:

How many tactical decisions do you make in an average CM game? How many do you make in an average CM turn? All that micromanagement from battalion to fire team level? Endless tactical decision making.

Naturally, decision-making and execution are very, very different. And CM is by no means 100% realistic. But it's probably realistic enough, especially integrated into a full on professional military syllabus. If nothing else, it's a lot safer and cheaper to 'fail forward' in CM than it is on exercise or- God forbit- the real deal.

Hell yes. Put us war gamers head to head with a game / sim and sure we can perform well. Put us head to head with live soldiers. Yikes we would have no hope because we don't have a relationship with our subordinates, we don't have their trust, we don't have experience with managing the pressure that RL combat generates, the list of what we don't have goes on and on and on.

Give those officers time in CM to "fail forward" with their tactical decisions and then those officers can kick our ass IRL and in the game

[A Canadian Cat]

On 7/5/2022 at 3:15 PM, Warts 'n' all said:

I've no idea who Iain McNeil is, but I bet he's never done this... 

He's the exec at Sltherine who works with the UK military and helped create the partnership with BFC to bring CM to the UK military and to Steam.

On 7/5/2022 at 3:15 PM, Warts 'n' all said:

Hey that's Billy McNeill not Iian.