Does Combat Mission encourage/reward human wave attacks?

[L4Pilot]

I recently had the enjoyable experience in a PBEM of having one of my dug-in US Paratroop (full strength, OK morale, not pinned at the beginning of the turn) squads charged by half a BATTALION of SMG armed German infantry. That's right - about 15 squads - 22-24 toal units counting squads and teams and Hq's

My esteemed opponent used the devious tactic of having 2/3 of these units charge directly onto my squad, which incidentally was in a foxhole and in command range of a company HQ with the bravery modifier. The other 8 - 10 units hung back about 80 meters and provided "covering fire." Right through the 12 - 14 charging units.

Here's a snapshot taken at the height of the attack. You can see a substantial number of German units virtually bathing in the targetlines of their compatriots.

HREF = "http://members.aol.com/tailwheler/humanwave.jpg"

I'm aware that what is represented graphically in CM is not necessarily what exactly is happening. But I'm hard pressed to figure out a rationale for what happened except for what the game showed. Which was 100 guys firing SMG's in several waves converging on a point that 50 more guys were firing SMG's at.

Casualties to the Germans due to friendly fire? ZERO! I had ID on some of the charging units to watch their casualties "accrue" over the turn. Which they didn't. I watched one SMG unit receive 15 bursts of auto weapons fire (yes, I counted) through its unit symbol in about 8 seconds with zero casualties.

Now the US squad in question certainly responded to the incoming fire as you might expect. It fired a few shots into the onrushing mass, which also didn't cause any casualties that I could determine. The German fire caused about 4 or 5 casualties to the men in foxholes (even though it didn't cause any casualties to the running, erect German units between the firing units and my squad) at which point the squad broke, ran and was slaughtered.

So the US squad responded to the incoming fire to the extent you'd expect. It all arrived at their dug-in position - enough to make them, despite the close proximity of their bravery inspiring Company CO, decide they'd rather chance it than stay in the cover of their foxholes.

So what's happening here?

Marksmanship? Are the German units involved so good with their SMG's that they can fire them 80 yards through and around a hundred charging men and kill men in foxholes with no intervening friendly casualties? If so, Good Shooting!

Geometry? Were the firing units perhaps holding their machine pistols over their heads so as to fire over the heads of their fellow soldaten and into the foxholes of the defending Americans? Or using high angle plunging fire? Well, probably not.

I guess my ire is raised not by the final outcome, but by the results. Yes, 12 soldiers (despite being armed with semi auto and auto weapons) rushed from 100 yards by 10x or 15x as many enemies are likely to get overrun. Not certain, for we have all read of exceptions, but likely.

What irks me is that it didn't cost the attackers more. Both from the Thompsons, M1's, carbines and BAR of the defenders and also from the "supporting" "friendly" fire of the attackers, that certainly pinned the defenders and made them break and run, but didn't faze the attackers at all as it went through them on the way to the US squad.

So BTS my question(s) is (are), does fire impact "friendly" units on the way to the target, either in casualties or in "suppression" level? Are spray weapons like SMG's more likely to cause friendly casualties than rifles? And should enemy fire be attenuated at the target end, if not by the bodies of the intervening troops (which I would have liked in this case) but at least by the extra caution of troops firing through friendlies?

And if nothing else, here's a new tactic - just line 'em up and send 'em in, No worries about lines of fire or friendly casualties. We can just go back to the Phalanx. Over the top, boys!

Ooops, wrong war.

[This message has been edited by L4Pilot (edited 02-13-2001).]

[russellmz]

yeah i tried that a couple times fer fun...

even with machine guns, you can only fire at one group at a time and at 10:1 odds, you don't really need that much tactics.

add some arty, machine guns, and then see what happens...

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russellmz,

Self-Proclaimed Keeper for Life of the Sacred Unofficial FAQ.

"They had their chance- they have not lead!" - GW Bush

"They had mechanical pencils- they have not...lead?" - Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

[This message has been edited by russellmz (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Lugnut]

I think there are two simplifications in the simulation that make this sort of Banzai charge more effective than it should be.

The first is granularity of fires. Squads seem to fire at only one target at a time and at discrete intervals. In the situation where one or more of your squads is being charged by a number of enemy squads it is not uncommon for all the defenders to target just the closest attacker, leaving the others a clear run in. This answers the question of why your troops were brave enough to run full tilt across open ground into enemy fire - from CM's point of view the attacking unit _wasn't_ under fire. If unit fires were split up into smaller time chunks & amongst multiple nearby targets this effect would be reduced.

Which brings me to my second point, the behaviour of units under fire. While I am sure there are many documented instances of troops charging enemy positions with no regard for personal safety, it's unlikely it was the norm. A squad advancing on an enemy position that comes under fire would most likely immediately hit the dirt, return fire and then continue to advance by scurrying from cover to cover. The point here is that the advance would be _slowed_. The occasional fanatic squad could still charge on regardless, taking heavy casualties (is a running target more vulnerable to fire than a moving one in CM?).

[BFCElvis]

L4...Please don't take this the wrong way but are you joking?

The picture you put shows ONE squad being fired on by at least 10 units (that's how many targeting lines I counted). You didn't mention how long this exchange took place but I would be shocked if you squad lasted 20 seconds.

There are several things from what you have written that I think you might misunderstand.

1) Foxholes are not bunkers or pillboxes or any other heavily protected terrain. Foxholes do provide very good cover but they are much more shallow than it sounds like you picture them to be. You do not need to fire your weapon from on top of you head to hit something in one. And if you did then how would you expect your men to be able to see to fire on them as effectively and you think they should have.

2)I saw no other target lines going TO the German squads so it does not look like they were getting any help supressing the enemy advance. With that in mind, you are talking about 12 men with what sounds like about 150 men attacking them (I counted at least 17 German units so 150 may be on the light side)..trying get as much protection as they can in the foxhole and taking pot shots to try to slow down the onslaught. If you think about it in real life terms it is suprising that they got any shots off let alone anything accurate that would seriously threaten the German advance.

3)As you mentioned. Don't take the targeting lines and size of the units for what they appear. From the range you are talking about it is not too much of a stretch to think that all the Germans could easily target you squad without hitting their own men (although I will admit he had SSSSOOOO any men that someone getting hit by friendly fire isn't a stretch either). I noticed one German squad (the closest on the right part of the screen) seemed to be reduced in size even if you weren't able to confirm it.

4) German SMG squads are DEADLY at close range. They will tear you up big time if they are close. And that many of them would kill ya dead real fast...actually now that I'm typing this I would be suprised if you squad lasted 10 seconds before it tried to run away. Which brings me to...

5) Your squad freaked. It went nuts when it saw all that mess running at it and firing machine guns. That's why it got up and ran. Not because it thought it would have a better chance running away. It knew if it didn't get out of there that 150 Germans would be right on top of it at any second and wanted out.

I could go on and on. The bottem line is that the game does not avor human waves. As a matter of fact I have gotten torn apart trying to do human waves. If a position is well defended it is the worst thing you can try to do. In your case you were heavily attacked in a very weak position. If I had seen a whole bunch of red tageting lines from different posistions I might not have as clear of a picture but the fact is that you had 1 squad that was outnumbered at least 10 to 1 and if they lasted more than 15 seconds then they should all get medals for bravery(posthumously of course).

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"When they finally put you in the ground..I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down" Elvis Costello

[BFCElvis]

Sorry misread Lugnut

pay no attention to this...just read the above.

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"When they finally put you in the ground..I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down" Elvis Costello

[This message has been edited by Elvis (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Guest Michael emrys]

L4, you've touched on one of the quirks of CM that actually gripes my ass. I've noted from the beginning that units seem able in most cases to fire through friendly units without causing them any harm, and frequently do so. In real life, as soon as a unit noticed they were firing into or near a friendly unit, they would check fire as quickly as possible. If there's anything worse for morale than causing friendly fire casualties, it's being friendly fire casualties. Therefore, armies went to great lengths to prevent them.

I'm afraid CM allows poor fire discipline to go on with no penalty. With some exceptions, the only time units are apt to suffer from friendly fire is if they actually enter the aiming point of the fire. Otherwise, you can shoot over them, around them, or even right through them. It's as if the bullets dematerialize as they leave the guns and only reconstitute themselves when they reach the intended targets.

Ah well, nobody's perfect...

Michael

[wie201]

Uh, yes well . . . Kinda reminds you of those old horror movies where, before going into a room, one person tells the other "you go first." I would hate to have been one of the ones going first here. If the guys in the foxhole were hit by this wall of bullets, I can't imagine much in front of it getting through unscathed.

[Steve McClaire]

While the example that started this thread is pretty much a foregone conclusion (that squad was toast), I do think Lugnut's point about granularity of fire is one that should be looked at for future versions of the game.

I suspect the attack L4Pilot described couldn't be stopped in CMBO without close to even numbers of defending units -- even though (if WW1 is any sort of example) it should only take a few (two or so?) well-situated machine gun teams to stop this sort of charge. Has anyone tried this sort of thing in a test case? I'm curious how it turned out.

[Guest Pillar]

The counter to this "WW1" rush type strategy is of course MG "mowing".

Not sure if CM models this "target rich" firing at all.

[patboivin]

In an older carboard WW-II simulation game, it was possible to use spraying fire with MGs. I don't know if this can happen in CM.

I noticed that too, a unit supposedly composed of 10 or more men can only shoot at one target at a time, even when they are about to get overrun.

[Londoner]

Yes, i made a scenario based on a US ranger recon platoon in the Adrennes. It got rushed by a very green battalion, and i mean RUSHED. With one, crack/vet platoon and 3 .30 cals dug in (what the platoon really had), in woods withs max ammo i was able to inflict 250 odd WIA/KIA on the rushing masses. I was very impressed, according to the Stephan Ambroses (Citizen Soldiers) account, this was roughly the figure the Ranger platoon actually inflicted on the German Battalion before it was overwhelmed, needless to say the german force was shattered. So in my opinion no, CM does not reward human wave attacks in the least.

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In military operations timing is everything.

Wellington

1800.

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 02-13-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 02-13-2001).]

[Major Tom]

Contrary to popular belief, swivelling a HMG in a lawnmower style firing pattern is not very effective. You tend to miss a hell of a lot of stuff (unless they are walking shoulder to shoulder ala Napoleonic style). In most war accounts I have read, units usually only fired at other single units as well. This sporadic mad firing rarely happened, and only did once discipline was lost. CM models a lot of stuff that we do not see. I have lost Infantry units without seeing a single tracer or shell land near them when in close range with other enemy units.

I don't really see anything that needs fixing. If the 12 man squad was able to fire at every target, do you think that the fire from 1 M1 Garand would slow down an entire german SMG squad??

CM does not reward wave attacks, but, shock attacks are well supported.

[This message has been edited by Major Tom (edited 02-14-2001).]

[Guest Big Time Software]

There is some truth to what L4Pilot has pointed out, but not nearly to the extent that I think he (or Michael) feels there is.

The reality is that firing through friendly forces was possible provided they were spaced out. Obviously you CAN create situations in CM where firing through friendly units is unrealistically easy to do, but one has to keep in mind that CM's firing model is abstract.

What I mean by that is in real life 10 men are not all firing, at the same time, when 10 men in front of them are all standing up. A few men would be firing through gaps caused by general spacing and guys taking temporary cover (leap frogging). But in CM we can't do this, so we have the abstracted situation where the squad always is on the move, as a whole, and a unit firing always fires at once. In the end the results should be the same, but of course graphically it doesn't look the same.

In some extreme situations the firing units should be forced to hold fire or at least fire at a reduced level. This is not possible to do in CM because it would require a few extra CPUs to do the LOS/LOF calculations

The other abstraction in CM that comes into play with Human Waves is that running units that are NOT under fire by heavy weapons have NO concept that their ranks (on the whole) are suffering huge losses. So the morale of units not being fired at are, at least in extreme situations, not being knocked about as much as they might have been in real life. Tack on a couple more CPUs and we'll see what we can do about this problem

Now... the MG spraying behavior is in the game. But it only kicks in at close range. The MG unit purposefully switches targets more frequently than it does at longer ranges. However, we do think there is room for improvement and plan on looking at this for CM2.

Squads firing at multiple units at the same time will not change the overall behavior of a human wave. Right now all weapons of one unit are brought to bare on one enemy unit per instance of fire. That means the maximum effect is brought upon ONE squad. Thus the chances of killing, panicking, routing, etc. is increased more than would be realistic in a wave attack. On the other hand, if you are out numbered that means another squad is not recieving attention. Your squad will likely switch targets when it feels more threatened, so a 2:1 or 3:1 situation isn't a big deal for the defender. BUT... mass units at one unit and they are dead. Anybody that questions the reality of that has got some explaining to do

Think of it in terms of men... 100 men are attacking your position manned by 10 men. Your unit successfully deflects 30 enemy men, in one way or another. That means 70 men still get through and kill your unit. You got a 3:1 result in 1:10 odds. Not bad.

Now look at it in terms of Squads... 10 enemy squads are attacking your position manned by 1 squad. Your unit engages 5 enemy units in the course of the attack and manages to incapacitate 3 of them. The remaining 7 units, 5 of which you didn't even shoot at, overrun and kill your unit. You got a 3:1 result in 1:10 odds. Not bad.

Now where is the difference?

Steve

[This message has been edited by Big Time Software (edited 02-14-2001).]

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

The defenders in such situations often can't see the attackers, despite them running through the open. Or only a few of them can. Because their heads are in the dirt, under the rim of their holes, and there is grass, and the ground is not pool-table level, and the running men are crouching. Everyone who is up high enough to see is drawing enourmous return fire.

And troops do charge straight across "open" ground (grass) to point blank. Sometimes the defenders are not heads-down and blow them up. Often they are, and they get cut to pieces as a result.

Overkill like shooting the nearest certainly happens. It is also very common in reading first hand accounts of such situations, to hear from someone who *was* up and firing, that although he hit people they did not go down, or go down fast enough, and he kept shooting the same guy. These are all clear signs of a "fight" psych reaction.

From many other participants, they talk about the noise, and when they or men around them got hit, and when somebody said to pull back, and add that they could not see the enemy until they were right on top of them. These are clear signs of a "helper" psych reaction, trying to help the wounded or relying on the group but afraid or unwilling to expose themselves and kill the enemy.

Jams and other such problems (wounded e.g.) are another frequent item, with the reaction to them a true test of the overall response. "Helpers" clear jams and get ammo and drag the wounded, but are rarely found firing fully functioning weapons at the enemy, except at the closest range.

Others just run, or stay down in their holes, but those two are the most common.

Once the range gets under about 100 yards, one side of the other gets the upper hand, psychologically as well as in firepower terms. The other side then gets suppressed, sees little, shoots little, and loses.

As for the sizes and space, be sure you put all the units on "realistic" scale. As for Napleonic shoulder-to-shoulder, try a little HE.

You can indeed use "area target" for final protective fire in CM. But it effects the targeted area only. That is the only problem with CM's depiction of this type of event. You should be able to put MG one on this fire-lane, and MG two on that fire-lane, and everybody crosses one or the other somewhere.

Even that is not as magically effective as some people think, however. No MG can be fired continually, trigger held down, without running through its available ammo in a matter of seconds. And "grazing" fire is often too high to actually "graze". It has to be kept at the height of a crawling man, or dips in ground and such prevent it from working.

In CM, single squads will get blown up very easily, which is quite realistic. But platoon positions, in my experience, defend themselves much much better. The reason is that as the range drops, shooting becomes more frequent if a units is *not* suppressed, while running attackers do not fire until they stop running (=reach cover, usually). It is relatively easy to suppress one squad of defenders. 3-5 is a taller order, and the same overkill, shoot the closest, and shoot who just fired, effects, will work for the defender.

I have seen platoons get shot down in open or a street very often in CM, when trying to enter a location held by even a small platoon (HQ, 1 squad, half-squad remnant e.g.). When there is supporting fire from another platoon and heavy weapons, covering e.g. the same street, I've never seen people get across, except captured or cowering and soon shot. Unless the defenders are already suppressed (e.g. by arty) - then charges usually work. Which is entirely realistic.

It is all a bit at the level of silly in the example given, though, because one artillery FFE and the "masser" is toast. That, and not allegedly killing his own guys or the single squad being able to do anything to them, is the real reason such things weren't often done.

But the scale of the real deal, incidentally, was a battalion's worth of infantry charging as seperated company waves on frontages as narrow as 100-200 yards, in some cases. The NVA did things like that in Nam, and on only slightly longer frontages the Chinese did them in Korea, both successfully at times. Debacles in cases where timely arty could be brought down on them before they got "inside" FFE distances from friendlies. In CM terms, 1-2 full squads per "tile", then that 3-4 times in a row at the same spot, over half an hour.

For what it is worth...

[This message has been edited by jasoncawley@ameritech.net (edited 02-14-2001).]

[Lacky]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

The other abstraction in CM that comes into play with Human Waves is that running units that are NOT under fire by heavy weapons have NO concept that their ranks (on the whole) are suffering huge losses. So the morale of units not being fired at are, at least in extreme situations, not being knocked about as much as they might have been in real life. Tack on a couple more CPUs and we'll see what we can do about this problem

Shouldn't require a few more CPU's! When an unit starts to panic or becomes broken/routed, generate an invisible artillery blast centered on the unit. The sphere of influence when contacts same-side forces could chip away at their morale, but do no physical harm. The size of the "blast" could be based on the experience level of the unit. When an elite squad "Breaks and runs," it ought have a dramatic effect on nearby friendly forces.

Think of it as cascading morale failure. When units are packed in so tightly together and one unit starts to get completely ripped apart, nearby friendly units should have their morale reduced for a period of time.

[Sergeant Huang]

OOPS, it looks like the bad guy is ME !!

Ok, here is the exact info :

18 German infantry squads in total, some of

them are damaged, and two icons represent

half squad. The others are 7 HQs, which

also have some damages. The force is about

1 VG rifle platoons and 5 VG SMG platoons

roughly make it two companies.

------------------

Sgt. Huang

I LOVE my country, but my

government suc*s.

[Dschugaschwili]

As far as I know small arms fire in CM only has an effect in a small area around the target, but not on the way there. So you can shoot through friendly units without hurting them as long as they are not standing too close to the target.

On the other hand, on a few occasions I had a friendly SMG squad firing at an enemy squad that had just entered its house eliminate the platoon HQ trailing behind the squad before the squad itself without actually seeing it. So you shouldn't underestimate the area effect of small arms fire.

Dschugaschwili

[Pascal DI FOLCO]

Hey L4, I'm OT for this thread, but any news of Normandy Campaign ? Must have been a week since last ones...

[Guest Big Time Software]

Lacky wrote:

Shouldn't require a few more CPU's! When an unit starts to panic or becomes broken/routed, generate an invisible artillery blast centered on the unit.

Ah... but if were only that simple Having units be aware of each other involves a LOT more than you are thinking about. First of all, if negatives are looked at, so should positives. So if you are charging and the other 9 squads around you are doing just fine, then your morale should get a benefit, right? Right Now this means that we have to do the "radiating morale" thing all the time, even if there is no change to the morale state of the unit. Massive CPU hit right there.

OK, so how does one unit "notify" another what its morale is? Well, by doing a search of a predetermined area and seeing which other units are within range. Couple this with the fact that it is going on ALL the time and we got ourselves a healthy task for the CPU to handle. But it gets worse. Far worse...

Is it fair for a unit OUT of LOS to be affected by a nearby unit? No. OK, then we have to not only identify the units nearby, but also the ones that are in visual contact. This means we have to ask the LOS routine to CONSTANTLY check LOS for every unit in every direction. LOS routines, which are called as infrequently as possible right now, already account for something like 40% of the CPU load. You are probably talking about increasing turn processing by many minutes for each minute now spent. Could be even worse; I wouldn't know unless we tried it. And of course, the more units you have the worse this gets.

There are other problems too. Would an Elite unit care if a single closeby Green unit got the crap beaten out of it? Probably not. Would an Elite unit care if it is the only decent unit in a 4 unit attack and the other 3 are running away? It would probably care a great deal. Now we have to make some sort of system that is more aware of the total number of units around it, what each is doing, and potentially how it should effect the subject unit.

And of course, shouldn't we be looking at how enemy units are behaving too? If all the enemy units in front of you are running away, shouldn't all your units (in LOS of course!) get their morale raised? Well, you just potentially doubled the already staggering CPU load because now enemy units have to "notify" friendly units and vice versa.

I hope this illustrates how difficult this behavior is to simulate with today's hardware. The concepts are pretty easy to come up with, the coding wouldn't be that bad either, but the hardware is simply not up to the task. And won't be for a long time.

Steve

[Commissar]

CM most definitely doesn't reward human wave attacks. I've played a ton of games and whenever the computer even attempts to do something like a human wave, my units decimate them. In one recent game, the computer tried to mass charge my positions over open ground. End result was a casuality rate of 20:1 while I had one KIA and he had 27. Needless to say I won. Of course, human waves can be extremely effective but only in certain conditions. If I have decent cover and can concentrate the wave attack on an isolated position, the tactic will most likely work. It seems to me the game models that fact pretty well. If you properly arrange your defensive positions, you'll welcome an enemy to do a human wave attack regardless if units in CM can only target one group of 10 men at a time (result will be the same). He dies by the bushel load and you win the game faster.

[CavScout]

One thing CM does do is make concentration of forces too effective. There is little reason to not concentrate your forces, and this is probably the biggest edge when on the attack. There should be a point of diminishing returns. You should not be able to put a company's worth of troops in a platton's worth of space and still have the company's firepower. Units should be blocked by friendly units in the line of fire.

[Robert Mayer]

I think CavScout has hit upon something that's pretty significant, the idea of diminishing returns.

We already have realistic penalties for cramming in too many soldiers in a small space in terms of incoming enemy fire--arty on top of too many men makes lots of corpses. But there's less of a disincentive to cram together loads of men on the assault (where you're not likely to get hit with arty that close to the enemy's lines). I'd suspect that realistically you reach a point where you have too many men in too close proximity to each other to effectively deliver all of their firepower.

Is there any way to simulate this at least? Perhaps not without the performance hit BTS is talking about--it would require some more elaborate LOS/LOF calculations I suppose. But it would be nice.

Still, with turns being one minute, and a lot of things being abstracted, it's not too bad--there's a lot you can "factor in" and assume in the internices between discrete actions depicted on screen.

[Guest Big Time Software]

I think there are plenty of realistic disincentives for piling up a lot of guys in one small space. I just did a quick set of tests (US attacking Germans, both Regular):

2 platoons, wedge, running at one MG 200m away.

2 platoons, line, running at two AP minefields 10m away.

2 platoons, line, running at one 75mm IG 200m away.

Mines - In one turn 9 men, in 3 squads, KO'd in first platoon. Second platoon saw what happened to first platoon, and ran away. If there were any German units overwatching this area, both platoons would have been cut to pieces. Had they been spaced out, using leap frog tactics, this probably would not have happened.

MG - 4 turns, 11 US soldiers in 1st Platoon taken out. Only the HQ from 1st Platoon (with one man left) made it to the MG position. The other three squads were broken/panicked. MG position wiped out by 2nd Platoon.

Every time the MG fired, all 4 units in 1st Platoon had their Morale status lowered. Why? Because they were bunched up. If they were spread out, or leap frogging, the non target units wouldn't have been affected. By chance, 2nd Platoon trailed 1st Platoon by about 20m, enough that they weren't affected by the MG fire.

IG - 4 turns, 27 US attackers (roughly 1/2 the force) were casualties. All but one HQ unit took losses. Only one squad made it to the IG position. All others ran away, many Panicked and 2 were Broken. One near hit took out a few guys and sent 3 units running. Again, spacing out and leapfrogging would have avoided this.

The conclusion is clear, to me. While I don't disagree that CM doesn't fully simulate the negative factors of a large human wave attack, I fail to see how anybody can argue that there is some sort of BENEFIT vs. sound tactical spacing and covering fire.

Some are going to say that a short range "bum's rush" is another story. It is. But I would like to see one historical example where a massed well disciplined (i.e. Regular or better) 20m rush on a smaller, non "armored" (i.e. pillbox) enemy did not result in the attacker winning with few casualties.

Bottom line is that if you mass your troops, and the enemy has the ability to reach out and touch you, most often you will be worse off than if you hadn't all things being equal. And I see this as being quite realistic, even if CM isn't perfect in all respects.

Steve

[This message has been edited by Big Time Software (edited 02-14-2001).]

[CavScout]

Steve that was not my point.

My point is more along the lines of the firepower that concentrating in CM gives that would be limited in Real Life ^TM. There is a problem when one can attack with a mass of platoons, say three deep, and you lose none of you firepower.

XXXX

XXXX

XXXX

XXXX

If that represented an attack, the front 4 should only have the ability to fire effectivly on a defender. In CM the (all other things equal like terrain) entire formation 16 could bring fire on the target.

[Henri]

Apparently no one has mentioned the most important factor for a situation like this -suppression.

A unit being fired upon is partially suppressed, and one being fired on a lot can be totally suppressed, which is probablyu why the attackers did not take a single casualty.

This is of course an abstraction, but not always an unrealistic one. It DID happen that single squads in a foxhole being fired upon from all sides hit the bottom of their foxholes and did not fire back. The opposite also happened, I suppose, but not in CM.

But in any case, the result is about the same: all of the defenders die and most of the attackers live...

Henri