Casualty expectations

[wyskass]

3 minutes ago, OBJ said:

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.

This reminded me of another mistake/reminder. Being too focused on the objective, discounting other possible important enemy positions, and getting flanked.

[OBJ]

Just now, Centurian52 said:

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.

Agree, I think we have some scenarios in which a significant portion of the defender's points come from exiting units, no?

[Centurian52]

4 minutes ago, OBJ said:

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.

At this scale we are often talking about "pursuit by fire". Think the Carentan battle sequence from Band of Brothers, culminating in them machinegunning the German infantry from the windows as they fled across the fields.

[OBJ]

1 minute ago, Centurian52 said:

At this scale we are often talking about "pursuit by fire". Think the Carentan battle sequence from Band of Brothers, culminating in them machinegunning the German infantry from the windows as they fled across the fields.

Fair, agree, 'pursuit by fire' is a thing

[Anthony P.]

On 1/4/2024 at 7:48 PM, OBJ said:

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).

That's very possible, but the statistics I've found only detail losses at the division level. But reading accounts such as Company Commander certainly lends much credence to your claim. When MacDonald assumes command of his company, it's virtually demolished in the very first major battle he commands it in (being on the defence during the start of the battle of the Bulge) and even though it only gets better from that point out, it still sustains staggering casualty rates until the last couple of months of the war when they're more or less engaged in trying to advance faster or at least as fast as the Germans are fleeing (retreat seems a generous way of phrasing it if you've read the book).

At one stage the company consists to such a large degree of green, incredibly green replacements that they're having to train them on basic marksmanship because the replacements have only had literally one day at the rifle range with M1 rifles, nothing else. Going into the battle of the Huertgen forest, the company even lacks its 60mm mortars because they simply do not have anyone left who's trained to use them: the best they manage is one man who volunteers to have a go with limited training and proceeds to almost hit them because he fails to secure the mortar, causing it to recoil to near 90° up in the air. Later on one of the many green replacements indeed does blow up the company by dropping an unsecured rifle grenade in the company mess.

 

On 1/4/2024 at 8:28 PM, 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?

I've played around with the thought of arranging something like that, but it would require three players (two playing against each other and one serving as a game master), with subsequent battles being arranged along with a focus on actually keeping your assigned unit somewhat intact: realistically few commanders would likely accept the idea of losing ~25% of their men in a single battle, even if that led to twice the casualties for the enemy and achieving all objectives... or a grenade might roll into his tent one dark night if he didn't.

[OBJ]

15 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

realistically few commanders would likely accept the idea of losing ~25% of their men in a single battle, even if that led to twice the casualties for the enemy and achieving all objectives... or a grenade might roll into his tent one dark night if he didn't.

@Anthony P. I think you are right about US commander's force preservation sensitivities in the modern era (post Vietnam). I would guess the same is true for other 'western' countries with all volunteer professional militaries.

We might disagree, for the US at least, on the era before Vietnam. Even up to and through Korea American society was very different, as was the US military.

[Erwin]

Re making the player cognizant of keeping casualties low, isn't that part of the scoring system?  When CMSF first was released, the games heavily penalized the player for losses leading to a "Loss" result, or kicked one out of the campaign.  They seem to have become much more "lenient" in recent games.