How close to the target did Soviet motor rifle squads dismount?

[womble]

One way that the residual effects of a tac nuke, or the possible presence of those effects, could affect the CM scale would be the degradation of infantry perfomance while wearing their personal protection, and the changed emphasis on fighting buttoned or not... "We made a hole with a nuke. Get through there before the enemy plug it with their reserves." seems like a potential setup for a scenario.

AiUI, troops operating in MOPP would tire faster, and be less aware of their surroundings, potentially less effective with their personal armaments and less able to communicate by voice. All, of course, good reasons to stay mounted and let the turret on the IFV do the work...

[chuckdyke]

4 minutes ago, womble said:

tire faster, and be less aware of their surroundings

Tiring in the game doesn't effect anything but the speed a unit can travel. Tired has a different meaning in the game than in a Webster dictionary. Tiring is just a warning that in the next turn the unit will be tired.

[womble]

1 minute ago, chuckdyke said:

Tiring in the game doesn't effect anything but the speed a unit can travel. Tired has a different meaning in the game than in a Webster dictionary. Tiring is just a warning that in the next turn the unit will be tired.

So? What? Why is the precise effect and labelling of "fatigue" in game relevant to whether to model the extra fatigue which wearing NBC gear would incur on active squaddies? Or do you just like making irrelevant-but-true statements?

It might also be appropriate to limit NBC-clad troops to Quick, disallowing Fast moves.

[Centurian52]

Perhaps the effects of wearing MOPP gear could be partially modeled by lowering fitness in the editor? That would make troops tire more quickly at least. As far as modeling the reduction in situational awareness and overall effectiveness that comes with wearing restrictive NBC protection, perhaps lower experience a bit in the editor?

As far as modeling the aftermath of a tactical nuke for scenarios exploring efforts to exploit the resulting holes in the front line, that would require a considerable amount of research in order to get the density of surviving troops and equipment right. Certainly the battle would see sparse defenders with very low unit strengths (perhaps 10% strength as a ballpark figure, depending on yield and distance from the blast center). Lots of destroyed tanks as flavor objects mixed in with the working tanks. Tanks might be tricky. Tanks and other armored vehicles could survive much closer to the blast center than infantry could. But just because the crew has survived the explosion inside the armor protection of the tank doesn't mean that the tank is still effective (all of those subsystems outside the armor would be destroyed at a much greater distance than the tank itself would be destroyed at). Things like terrain (hills would be an obstacle to the explosion, while valleys would funnel the explosion (changing the shape of the destructive effects from concentric circles to more oblong concentric shapes)), buildings, forests, whether troops were dug in or in the open, would all have complicated effects on the survival patterns of troops and equipment. The defenders should also probably have very low moral, in addition to having low unit strengths, on account of having recently been nuked. Overall such a scenario would be both difficult to get right, and extremely unbalanced. So I can see why no one has attempted it.

In any case, while I think it's an interesting an valuable discussion, this thread is about dismount distance. I only brought up nukes as a probably reason for why the Soviets envisioned dismounting as little as possible. If we are going to continue discussing nukes, and how we can account for them in Combat Mission, we should probably create a new thread for that discussion.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Centurian52

[chuckdyke]

8 hours ago, womble said:

AiUI, troops operating in MOPP would tire faster, and be less aware of their surroundings, potentially less effective

You quoted like the consequence of fatigue influences spotting ability. An exhausted unit in CM still can crawl a mile in full NBC gear. It would take an overhaul of the engine to model NBC accurately in the game.

[womble]

21 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

You quoted like the consequence of fatigue influences spotting ability. An exhausted unit in CM still can crawl a mile in full NBC gear. It would take an overhaul of the engine to model NBC accurately in the game.

So sorry for your reading comprehension failure, there. That's a list of what MOPP might affect. Not "MOPP makes them tired, so they'll...".

6 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

Perhaps the effects of wearing MOPP gear could be partially modeled by lowering fitness in the editor? That would make troops tire more quickly at least. As far as modeling the reduction in situational awareness and overall effectiveness that comes with wearing restrictive NBC protection, perhaps lower experience a bit in the editor?

Yeah, that occurred to me a while after I hit post on my last. Would probably need explaining in the scenario briefing.