Casualty expectations

[MikeyD]

Long ago I joked that there are two kinds of CM players. There's the 'interactive war movie' personality types who play it just to watch the spectacle unfold, then there are the 'win at all costs' competitive types who are compelled to... win at all costs. Interactive war movie types don't get rattled by unexpected casualties because its all part of the show. The competitive players are goal oriented. Very very VERY goal oriented. 

 

[slippy]

I think for me there is an issue of too many kia vs wounded. No matter how I play there always seems to be a large percentage of kia......I don't think it makes much difference to game play, but its difficult to get 'realistic ' results

[MikeyD]

'Casualty rate too high' was a common theme a couple years ago on the board. But events in Ukraine of the past year have largely neutered that complaint. If you play like a drunken Russian general you will get casualty rates like a drunken Russian general.

[chuckdyke]

13 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

'Casualty rate too high' was a common theme a couple years ago on the board. But events in Ukraine of the past year have largely neutered that complaint. If you play like a drunken Russian general you will get casualty rates like a drunken Russian general.

It is more the tactical drill which can take ages to get it right. Playing Soviet WW2 like you play US Marines 2016 usually don't end well. Reason I came to dislike Black Sea, played it like WW2. 

[wyskass]

Well, I tried to go with advice reminders and good principles. After 10 minutes of slowly advancing observers and making safe vehicle positions, I noticed a whole line of entrenched AT in a far corner. What was bewildering is how it seemed to wake them up to suddenly see and attack the vehicles that have already been sitting in that same position over 10 minutes. How does getting spotted by one unit, give them visibility of all other units previously unseen. I had to retreat everything and advanced basically 0 minutes forward and in worse position than I was last week. I give up. Whenever I think I'm doing things right, I find out that I have no idea what how I'm supposed to do this. Had enough for now, after 3 hours of nothing but frustration and zero progress.  I'm done until I forget how much I dislike this game again.

Edited January 4 by wyskass

[chuckdyke]

12 minutes ago, wyskass said:

I forget how much I dislike this game again.

You need to think of everything. 

[Brille]

1 hour ago, wyskass said:

Well, I tried to go with advice reminders and good principles. After 10 minutes of slowly advancing observers and making safe vehicle positions, I noticed a whole line of entrenched AT in a far corner. What was bewildering is how it seemed to wake them up to suddenly see and attack the vehicles that have already been sitting in that same position over 10 minutes. How does getting spotted by one unit, give them visibility of all other units previously unseen. I had to retreat everything and advanced basically 0 minutes forward and in worse position than I was last week. I give up. Whenever I think I'm doing things right, I find out that I have no idea what how I'm supposed to do this. Had enough for now, after 3 hours of nothing but frustration and zero progress.  I'm done until I forget how much I dislike this game again.

 

A thing you need to understand is that the learning curve on these games is very steep. You will get beaten up often on your path of learning.

Having some military knowledge about units,doctrines and tactics help a lot but are no guarantees to win.

If you keep it up you will become better But for that you have to move on.

What helped me in CMx1 back then was a sparring partner who told me what I did right and what not. And I got constantly beaten by them, not gonna lie.

But at some point I was able to finally hurt them and even later took a victory or two from them.

 

So maybe that can help you too ?

Maybe it is an option for you too to go more into the past: CMSF2 with all its  modern stuff doesnt leave much room for errors. However CM ColdWar or even the WW2 titles are much more forgiving. The spotting and gunnery of each unit mostly revolves around primitive optics and eyballs. 

I myself started very late with the modern era just because I knew so little about it and WW2 was much more my style.

But with the understanding of the game mechanics and reading about modern stuff I got my feet into it too.

It is still difficult at times. And especially in CMBS there is so much that can go wrong in 1minute...

However it is a Simulation after all and as we can see in Ukraine: If you stand in the open for to long someone or something will hit you.

[OBJ]

Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble. Hope you don't give up. I don't know if you're into videos/instructional sites or not. Apologies if you've already done this but if you go to U-tube and search on 'Combat Mission Shock Force 2' you'll get a number of videos that could be helpful.

I found these helpful:

Bil's Battle Drill
http://battledrill.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/combat-mission-tactical-problems-cmtp.html

The Armchair General series of five videos (WWII)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ6dDlqye9Q

Monster Combat Mission (WWII CMBN) Tutorial:

https://youtu.be/SbE8795rt2s

 

Edited January 4 by OBJ

[Anthony P.]

12 hours ago, MikeyD said:

Long ago I joked that there are two kinds of CM players. There's the 'interactive war movie' personality types who play it just to watch the spectacle unfold, then there are the 'win at all costs' competitive types who are compelled to... win at all costs.

That kind of strikes at my main issue with CM campaigns: not that I'm competitive, but that you're so in the dark about what the consequences will be of anything but a total victory. I'd be fine with leaving walkover on some missions (e.g. Into The Valley in the Task Force Thunder campaign) because I regard them as unrealistic to even start due to previous losses, what I'm tasked with achieving vis-à-vis what force I have, etc.

Losing every now and then would be less of an issue if there wasn't an unknown risk that doing so would end the campaign in a loss.

[Centurian52]

13 hours ago, MikeyD said:

Long ago I joked that there are two kinds of CM players. There's the 'interactive war movie' personality types who play it just to watch the spectacle unfold, then there are the 'win at all costs' competitive types who are compelled to... win at all costs. Interactive war movie types don't get rattled by unexpected casualties because its all part of the show. The competitive players are goal oriented. Very very VERY goal oriented. 

 

I feel like I'm a bit of both. I'm definitely trying to win by as wide a margin as possible, with as few casualties as possible. I also know that part of what makes a good commander in the real world is the ability to recover from mistakes and random disasters without either giving up or letting anger lead to sloppiness and more mistakes. Which is why I make a point of never reloading saves after a blunder these days (in my very early CM days, around when I first picked up the original CMSF in 2009, I reloaded saves all the time). So I definitely think of myself as a fairly competitive CM player. But the whole reason I save every turn is because I think of myself as basically recording my own war movies, which are far more realistic than anything Hollywood will ever give us, as I play. And while I never go back and play from old saves, I do go back and watch old saves all the time.

9 hours ago, MikeyD said:

'Casualty rate too high' was a common theme a couple years ago on the board. But events in Ukraine of the past year have largely neutered that complaint. If you play like a drunken Russian general you will get casualty rates like a drunken Russian general.

The 'casualty rate too high' complaints are still alive and well. If they aren't being raised as much it's probably because there's a realization that there isn't much Battlefront can do about it in the current engine. There are individual anecdotes of entire Russian units getting wiped out in Ukraine, just as there are individual anecdotes of individual units getting wiped out in any war. But my overall impression from observing the war is that overall casualty rates, as a percentage of the unit involved in a particular engagement, are probably about on par with what you'd see in WW2. Which is to say, there is no 'typical' casualty rate. Just like in any war there is a wide spread of casualty rates across multiple engagements, with lots of engagements with fewer casualties and fewer engagements with lots of casualties. But, just like WW2, I suspect losing 10% of a unit in a single action would be considered a pretty bad day. And while total annihilations do happen, they aren't common. If you think about it, units in Ukraine spend months on the front line. If a unit lost 10% of its strength every day, it would be down to less than 50% strength after only a week, and would have lost nearly 90% of its original strength after only 3 weeks. After three months a brigade of 5,000 men would have no one left to rotate out. It's just mathematically impossible for a unit to go on fighting for months if it takes Combat Mission level casualties in every engagement. Though, the caveat that needs to be made every time this complaint is brought up is that this is really a wargaming problem, not specifically a Combat Mission problem. No tactical wargame seems to have ever managed to get this right.

[Anthony P.]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

If you think about it, units in Ukraine spend months on the front line. If a unit lost 10% of its strength every day, it would be down to less than 50% strength after only a week, and would have lost nearly 90% of its original strength after only 3 weeks. After three months a brigade of 5,000 men would have no one left to rotate out. It's just mathematically impossible for a unit to go on fighting for months if it takes Combat Mission level casualties in every engagement. Though, the caveat that needs to be made every time this complaint is brought up is that this is really a wargaming problem, not specifically a Combat Mission problem. No tactical wargame seems to have ever managed to get this right.

Now, I don't know much about how it looks in Ukraine (I'm not following it too closely, mainly because one of the big things you walk away with reading period media from WW2 is the realisation of just how insanely unreliable, bordering on uselessness most contemporary reporting is on such intense wars), but if we were to apply your example to WW2, it wouldn't come out looking too bad.

First of all, virtually no unit will see more than perhaps a week or two at most of consecutive frontline service before being rotated back to the rear, and even then few if none of those days will witness any major action statistically speaking. One typical major attack in North-West Europe could see something along the lines of maybe 10-15% of a unit (very rough estimation) become casualties (barring that the attack was a catastrophic failure, led to encirclement, etc.), and after that the unit would usually either be rotated out because it was too attrited and weakened, or at least placed in reserve.

Few CM missions bother featuring the day to day skirmishes and small scale activity (understandably, because few players would enjoy playing a 2 hour mission were the pixel truppen just sit in foxholes and stare across no man's land, with perhaps just the one Green pixel truppe taking a peek when he shouldn't have and getting picked off by a German sniper). And as for the losses which say an average US division which landed in Normandy had sustained by VE day... I believe that could be as high as to be in the region of 2-300%.

[Centurian52]

17 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Now, I don't know much about how it looks in Ukraine (I'm not following it too closely, mainly because one of the big things you walk away with reading period media from WW2 is the realisation of just how insanely unreliable, bordering on uselessness most contemporary reporting is on such intense wars), but if we were to apply your example to WW2, it wouldn't come out looking too bad.

First of all, virtually no unit will see more than perhaps a week or two at most of consecutive frontline service before being rotated back to the rear, and even then few if none of those days will witness any major action statistically speaking. One typical major attack in North-West Europe could see something along the lines of maybe 10-15% of a unit (very rough estimation) become casualties (barring that the attack was a catastrophic failure, led to encirclement, etc.), and after that the unit would usually either be rotated out because it was too attrited and weakened, or at least placed in reserve.

Few CM missions bother featuring the day to day skirmishes and small scale activity (understandably, because few players would enjoy playing a 2 hour mission were the pixel truppen just sit in foxholes and stare across no man's land, with perhaps just the one Green pixel truppe taking a peek when he shouldn't have and getting picked off by a German sniper). And as for the losses which say an average US division which landed in Normandy had sustained by VE day... I believe that could be as high as to be in the region of 2-300%.

Fair enough. I oversimplified things a bit by assuming a unit fought an engagement every single day and received no reinforcements while it was in the line (reinforcements do arrive a bit less reliably for both sides in Ukraine than for the Allies in WW2 though, so assuming no reinforcements was not entirely unjustified). I recall an anecdote of a US infantry division (I don't remember which one) taking 200% casualties over the course of the Battle for Normandy. Assuming they were in the front line from June 6th to August 30th, and were topped off to 100% every day, that works out to an average of about 2.3% casualties per day (3.5% if they took 300% losses over the course of the campaign). Obviously they wouldn't have suffered 2.3% casualties every day, but much fewer casualties on most days and much higher casualties on a few days. That may have been higher than normal, since I recall some WW2 general (again, I don't remember which one) estimating that a typical infantry division will lose 1% of its strength for every day it's in the line (I think I ran across this while looking up casualty estimation methods for large operations). Of course most of the individual companies and battalions in the division won't be fighting every single day. If we assume a two up one back formation, nested all the way down (two of the division's three regiments forward, two of each regiment's three battalions forward, and two of each battalion's three companies forward (I'm assuming that each formation is triangular, but I haven't double checked that for WW2 US infantry divisions before typing this)), then only 8 of the division's 27 companies would be forward on a given day of fighting. In that case a day in which the division as whole suffered 1% casualties would see each of the frontline companies suffering an average of 3.4% casualties. A day in which the division as a whole suffered 2.3% casualties would see the frontline companies suffering an average of 7.76% casualties. A while back I read about a particularly bitter struggle a British infantry battalion had over a hill in Normandy. They took the hill, but suffered 15% casualties in the process.

I should emphasize again, there is no typical casualty rate in the real world. Casualties span the whole range from 0% to 100%, with lots of engagements clustering between 0% and 10% and fewer engagements with losses towards the higher end of the spectrum. A typical Combat Mission scenario in which the winner suffers 25% casualties and the loser suffers 75% casualties is not unrealistic if taken in isolation. What's unrealistic is that nearly every scenario ends with losses in the tens of percentage points (in the titles covering peer vs peer and near-peer warfare). I don't think the issue has anything to do with player tactics or weapons being modeled as over-lethal. I think it just comes down to the fact that each side (human player or AI) is determined to fight the battle to the bitter end. We push our attacks far past the point when a real attacker would stop. We defend to the very last because (unless the scenario designer has thought to put in an exit zone) retreat is literally not an option. It really just comes down to the fact that we are taking each scenario in isolation. The larger operational/strategic/political context only exists in the narrative presented by the briefing, so it can't create any real incentive to keep our casualties down or preserve combat effective formations for the long term. Even in campaigns, when we do have an incentive to preserve our forces over several joined scenarios, we are still playing to win against a defender that will not retreat, or an attacker that will push themselves to complete destruction.

This is why this is a wargaming problem, not a Combat Mission problem. It's a problem for any tactical level wargame precisely because their scope is limited to the tactical level. But that's also why there isn't really an easy fix. Battlefront was able to deliver such a highly detailed and realistic tactical wargame in large part because they limited their scope to the tactical level. If the reason casualties are too high is that there are no operational/strategic incentives for keeping casualties low then the obvious solution would seem to be to expand the scope to include the operational level. But that would almost inevitably mean a less detailed representation of the tactical level. Effectively you'd be trying to make the game more realistic by making the game less realistic. If there was an easy solution, I imagine the problem wouldn't be so pervasive across all wargames.

[OBJ]

55 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

And as for the losses which say an average US division which landed in Normandy had sustained by VE day... I believe that could be as high as to be in the region of 2-300%.

Warning, tangent, proceed at own risk

I've assumed these 'percentage of unit strength overall casualties' were based on total unit strength, say ~15,000 men for a US 1944 Infantry Division.
It always seemed to me the percentage should be based on total authorized rifle company strength as my understanding is that's where the majority of the casualties were taken, and the % of authorized strength metric would be more meaning full.

So, just sayin,' a US 1944 Infantry Division that took casualties equating to 200% of division authorized strength, would have taken casualties equal to 575% of authorized rifle company strength. (6 officers, 187 enlisted per company x 3 companies per battalion x3 battalions per regiment x3 regiments per division).

300% of Division authorized strength would be 864% of authorized rifle company strength.

[JoMac]

3 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

The 'casualty rate too high' complaints are still alive and well. If they aren't being raised as much it's probably because there's a realization that there isn't much Battlefront can do about it in the current engine. There are individual anecdotes of entire Russian units getting wiped out in Ukraine, just as there are individual anecdotes of individual units getting wiped out in any war. But my overall impression from observing the war is that overall casualty rates, as a percentage of the unit involved in a particular engagement, are probably about on par with what you'd see in WW2. Which is to say, there is no 'typical' casualty rate. Just like in any war there is a wide spread of casualty rates across multiple engagements, with lots of engagements with fewer casualties and fewer engagements with lots of casualties. But, just like WW2, I suspect losing 10% of a unit in a single action would be considered a pretty bad day. And while total annihilations do happen, they aren't common. If you think about it, units in Ukraine spend months on the front line. If a unit lost 10% of its strength every day, it would be down to less than 50% strength after only a week, and would have lost nearly 90% of its original strength after only 3 weeks. After three months a brigade of 5,000 men would have no one left to rotate out. It's just mathematically impossible for a unit to go on fighting for months if it takes Combat Mission level casualties in every engagement. Though, the caveat that needs to be made every time this complaint is brought up is that this is really a wargaming problem, not specifically a Combat Mission problem. No tactical wargame seems to have ever managed to get this right.

This above^^^

[OBJ]

5 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

What's unrealistic is that nearly every scenario ends with losses in the tens of percentage points (in the titles covering peer vs peer and near-peer warfare). I don't think the issue has anything to do with player tactics or weapons being modeled as over-lethal. I think it just comes down to the fact that each side (human player or AI) is determined to fight the battle to the bitter end. We push our attacks far past the point when a real attacker would stop. We defend to the very last because (unless the scenario designer has thought to put in an exit zone) retreat is literally not an option. It really just comes down to the fact that we are taking each scenario in isolation. The larger operational/strategic/political context only exists in the narrative presented by the briefing, so it can't create any real incentive to keep our casualties down or preserve combat effective formations for the long term. Even in campaigns, when we do have an incentive to preserve our forces over several joined scenarios, we are still playing to win against a defender that will not retreat, or an attacker that will push themselves to complete destruction.

If the reason casualties are too high is that there are no operational/strategic incentives for keeping casualties low then the obvious solution would seem to be to expand the scope to include the operational level. But that would almost inevitably mean a less detailed representation of the tactical level. Effectively you'd be trying to make the game more realistic by making the game less realistic. If there was an easy solution, I imagine the problem wouldn't be so pervasive across all wargames.

Just because I enjoy the conversation...
Caution, I am not a programmer, of anything.

1. There is force preservation scoring in some modern era titles/scenarios, so typically the Blue player has a score incentive to keep casualties low.
2. It would be interesting to get Charles'/programmer's perspective on the viability of using the unit morale mechanic as a means of addressing what we think of as unrealistically effective units resulting in what are perceived as unrealistically high casualties. Victory conditions could be adjusted such that a lower threshold of destroyed/broken/shattered units ends the scenario. A randomizer could be added to provide variability in the threshold, separate thresholds for attacker and defender.

[Centurian52]

29 minutes ago, OBJ said:

Just because I enjoy the conversation...
Caution, I am not a programmer, of anything.

1. There is force preservation scoring in some modern era titles/scenarios, so typically the Blue player has a score incentive to keep casualties low.
2. It would be interesting to get Charles'/programmer's perspective on the viability of using the unit morale mechanic as a means of addressing what we think of as unrealistically effective units resulting in what are perceived as unrealistically high casualties. Victory conditions could be adjusted such that a lower threshold of destroyed/broken/shattered units ends the scenario. A randomizer could be added to provide variability in the threshold, separate thresholds for attacker and defender.

You'd need to do more than just incentivize the player to take/hold their objectives with minimal losses (that's pretty much how it works right now). You'd need to find a way to incentivize the player to eventually choose force preservation over taking/holding their objectives. For one, it would need to be possible for the defender to retreat. That means exit zones would need to be present in every scenario. An attack against a defender that fights to the last man is pretty much guaranteed to suffer unusually high losses. Beyond making retreat possible, I don't know how you incentivize the player to actually do it. You might be able to program the AI to call off an attack or abandon a defense under the right circumstances. But how do you incentivize a player to willingly abandon their objectives?

Edited January 4 by Centurian52

[wyskass]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

But how do you incentivize a player to willingly abandon their objectives?

Well, in practice I wasn't willing to continue with losing multiple vehicles, so "willing abandoned the objectives" and went to bed. LOL. End of game end of battle. Mostly a joke but in effect it incentivized my withdrawal from conflict. But the idea of having retreat choices is quite interesting, as a way to disengage and engage in more favorable conditions later. Does the existing "surrender" option not equate to retreat, by not meeting objective and triggering a different following scenario? Would be odd to surrender to a defender you're assaulting though.

To the point of competitive vs war movie observers.. It's interesting to consider that some people can disassociate with their actions to enjoy watching it as a movie. In my case, I wouldn't call it competitiveness as much as meeting intentions of actions. It's not so much to "win" or beat another, but to enjoy the satisfaction of well planned and executed action. Like designing and building something that works well. Without getting too philosophical, are we playing to feel like being in a real battle, or as exploring outcomes of different actions as how real militaries use war games. The latter may be enjoyable in the learning aspect itself where the "mistakes" are just another explored path. So maybe that's along similar lines of the war movie analogy

As to tutorials and guides, I tend to prefer to read rather than watch tutorials, due to controlling my own faster pace past what I know, and slower to think about what's new. But I'll check out the ones suggested. 

It's also interesting to hear about considering WW2 titles in the series. I've played HOI4 (quite different domain than CM of course) with WW2 and generally know more history about it so wanted to go with more modern stuff to complement CMANO for tactical level. It actually sounds like going further back in time to WW2 rather than Black Sea may be better to improving under my circumstances.  Black Sea sounds brutal.

It seems that maybe it's the random aspects of things such as artillery risk as well as the integral part of unknowns of enemy, which is more amplified than most all other games, increasing frustration.

Edited January 4 by wyskass

[Centurian52]

34 minutes ago, wyskass said:

Does the "surrender" option not equate to retreat, by not meeting objective and triggering a different following scenario?

I figure the "surrender" option equates to, well, surrender. As in the situation has gotten so bad that it's not just individual soldiers throwing up their hands, but the overall commander deciding to throw in the towel and march his remaining troops into captivity. You'll notice that when the enemy surrenders you aren't just automatically granted credit for all ground objectives, but also parameter objectives relating to enemy casualties, implying that the enemy force is completely destroyed.

But there's also more to retreating than just giving up the battle. Retreat normally involves some attempt at pursuit on the part of the winner (if no pursuit is attempted, it's often a sign that the winner is utterly exhausted), and efforts to fend off pursuit and break contact on the part of the loser. Basically the winner is trying to convert a victory into a decisive victory, while the loser is trying prevent a defeat from becoming a decisive defeat. The fight isn't really over until after you have successfully broken contact with the enemy. It's an entire additional phase of the battle that we're largely missing out on.

Edited January 4 by Centurian52

[OBJ]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

You'd need to do more than just incentivize the player to take/hold their objectives with minimal losses (that's pretty much how it works right now). You'd need to find a way to incentivize the player to eventually choose force preservation over taking/holding their objectives. For one, it would need to be possible for the defender to retreat. That means exit zones would need to be present in every scenario. An attack against a defender that fights to the last man is pretty much guaranteed to suffer unusually high losses. Beyond making retreat possible, I don't know how you incentivize the player to actually do it. You might be able to program the AI to call off an attack or abandon a defense under the right circumstances. But how do you incentivize a player to willingly abandon their objectives?

Hey @Centurian52

I agree, CM casualties are usually heavier than I would expect, but I lack in-depth historical data to know if my perceptions are accurate. That said, Scenario Designers may have more control than we think, from the engine manual:

"Unlike most wargames, Combat Mission allows “asymmetric” victory conditions where each side has its own unique parameters and is judged based on how well it achieves them. The side that best achieves its goals is declared the winner, even if technically both sides were within specified parameters. You can specify the following conditions for each side:
CASUALTIES - number of casualties the side is allowed to endure.
CONDITION - number of units allowed to be panicked, routed, tired, or wounded.
AMMO - amount of total ammunition that side is allowed to expend.
For each parameter the scenario designer determines the threshold in % (from 0% to 100%) and the amount of victory points associated with each once the threshold is reached."

[wyskass]

11 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

But there's also more to retreating than just giving up the battle. Retreat normally involves some attempt at pursuit on the part of the winner, and efforts to fend off pursuit and break contact on the part of the loser. Basically the winner is trying to convert a victory into a decisive victory, while the loser is trying prevent a defeat from becoming a decisive defeat. The fight isn't really over until after you have successfully broken contact with the enemy. It's an entire additional phase of the battle that we're largely missing out on.

Yes, surely, it involves more, including actually playing out a successful retreat when being pursued. It sounds like 'surrender' wouldn't be result in the same outcome then, but made me wonder the point of having it as an option. Now, I suppose it's applicable to defensive side battles where it can continue campaign, or PvP.

Edited January 4 by wyskass

[OBJ]

2 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

For one, it would need to be possible for the defender to retreat.

I am not entirely sure, defender losing/scenario ending at the point the Scenario Designer thinks the casualty/morale conditions would require the Defender should retreat I think does the same thing.

Law of unintended consequences we could get a lot of complaints about scenarios ending too soon.

Edited January 4 by OBJ

[OBJ]

14 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

But there's also more to retreating than just giving up the battle. Retreat normally involves some attempt at pursuit on the part of the winner, and efforts to fend off pursuit and break contact on the part of the loser. Basically the winner is trying to convert a victory into a decisive victory, while the loser is trying prevent a defeat from becoming a decisive defeat. The fight isn't really over until after you have successfully broken contact with the enemy. It's an entire additional phase of the battle that we're largely missing out on.

My limited perception is at CM level attack and pursuit/exploit are separate battles, the attack battle might be followed by the pursuit/exploit battle in a campaign.

[Centurian52]

4 minutes ago, OBJ said:

Law of unintended consequences we could gat a lot of complaints about scenarios ending too soon.

That's unavoidable. You will get complaints any time you implement a mechanic that makes a wargame more realistic. Combat Mission has by far the most realistic spotting mechanics of any wargame out there, and it's no coincidence that there are no shortage of complaints about the game's frustrating spotting mechanics. It turns out that reality is somewhat different from people's expectations.

[OBJ]

Again, in my limited experience, at CM level, once the attacker is on the objective the attacker's focus is on consolidation and being ready to repel counter attacks.

[Centurian52]

3 minutes ago, OBJ said:

My limited perception is at CM level attack and pursuit/exploit are separate battles, the attack battle might be followed by the pursuit/exploit battle in a campaign.

Exploitation after a breakthrough in a major operation would be its own separate scenario in Combat Mission. But an infantry company pulling back from defending a village would be under pressure from the moment they start pulling out to the few hundred meters they may need to pull back in order to break contact. That is well within the scope of a single scenario.