Yosoce Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 I think it would be cool if you could choose a battalion or company or combination of units that actually saw action in WWII and used their order of battle. Obviously not every company could be chosen, but with just a couple of you Grogs rummaging around Im sure you could come up with a "timeline" for a couple of your favorite units. Example: You want to fight a company sized battle in June 1944. So, you choose from a list of companies and the computer gives you the force composition and strength that the unit actually had at that time. You could even add a realistic armor force by attaching part of an armored section that was nearby. Now I know this sounds like way too much information to realistically have, but in reality all you would have to do is read the battle reports for a unit to find out what its composition was and what was nearby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Commissar Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 Not a bad idea, actually. This way, one could get into better touch with history and really feel for the various formations as they fought battles for you and such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Yosoce: I think it would be cool if you could choose a battalion or company or combination of units that actually saw action in WWII and used their order of battle..<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> CM already does this. At least, the Canadian Battalion and Company orders of battle are accurate. Can't speak for the other nationalities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yosoce Posted June 7, 2001 Author Share Posted June 7, 2001 I dont mean just generic order of battle, I mean the actual force mix. Say I choose the A Company, 509th Infantry for June 1944(if such a company even existed); well it just so happens that in May that company was shot up pretty badly tangling with some crack SS troops and has a large portion of green troops some of its heavy weapons werent replaced by June. This would be reflected in the forces you are given. The point is to get away from completely generic company force mixes, and yet at the same time not become unrealistic. And of course, playing with a Company/Battalion that actually saw action would be fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 Hi Yosoce, Not a bad idea, but totally impractical. Even if we chose a couple dozen examples people would demand about 1000000 more Plus, OBs for this small of a force are in general very poorly documented. Even when they are exact, they are only relevant to that particular minute of the day. 10 minutes later a unit could have been detatched, added, or hit by a single 155 round and been decimated. So while I understand why you suggested this, there is no practical way to do this except through the Editor. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skipper Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 > OBs for this small of a force are in > general very poorly documented. :confused: OBs of every unit from platoon upwards were documented in the end of every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 That would really be something. I wish you hadn't mentioned it. I really could get excited about that. Darn! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew H. Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Skipper: > OBs for this small of a force are in > general very poorly documented. :confused: OBs of every unit from platoon upwards were documented in the end of every day.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I think it's generally true that force returns for every unit (I'm not sure from what level) were completed almost every day. As a practical matter, though, these records are hard to get ahold of, though, as they tend to be microfilmed in some inconveniently located military archive. I'm not sure how much CM-applicable information these returns would have, although even minimal personnel information (39 of 47 men combat ready) would be of some use. I think I've seen books with some of this information attached as an appendix, for some units during some dates. This could be useful. But a month is too great a period of time for this info to be relevant; the status of a US infantry unit on 14 Dec 44 will likely be very different from that unit's status on 19 Dec 44. But this info would still be interesting. It seems less like something that BTS should do and more like something that someone should collect and put on a website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Heidman Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 It would be nice to have a toggle in the QB screen to select "in-combat" units. Then your squads and such would start the game short men, nad on up the line. Individual squads might be short some men, companes might be short squads, vehicle missing or damaged, randomized levels of ammunition, etc., etc. Another option I would like to see is variable unit quality. It was never the case that a veteran company would be composed of 3 veteran platoons each composed of three veteran squads, you would probably have some mix that averaged out to veteran. Jeff Heidman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 I like the idea in general, and Jeffs version of it seems to me practical. Perhaps a range of 50% strength to 100% (below that, they'd tend to consolidate with other beaten-up units tactically), with the endpoints rare, perhaps slightly "weighted" upward. Roughly, you'd get - 3 squads 3 squads down a few men (0-2 each) 2 squads and weapon team (e.g. MG) 2 squads 2 squads down a few men (0-2 each) For vehicle platoons, 3-5 for 5 vehicle size, 2-3 for 3-4 vehicle size would be possible. Designers already do this sometimes. And in operations, between battle reorganizations can hand you units down several men - sometimes as many as 5, even. The idea would be to just offer it as a setting, and when it is on buying a platoon of whosits would put in the units screen, instead of the full TOE a randomly "reduced" one, with the prices adjusted in some appropriate manner for what one actually received. As for his mixed quality idea, that could be easily handled by "rolling" per unit at the some time of choice, with perhaps a 10-15% chance of -1 quality and that same of +1, compared to the overall unit quality level. 70-80% of the units would be the quality level specified, but they'd vary from platoon to platoon. Since they'd go in at the unit choice time, the player would see the lower cost paid, and have a chance to add a team or 4th platoon to try to make up his strength. But he'd wind up with a more varied unit organization, in effect. Instead of always having platoons exactly equivalent to each other when buying a company, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenorBeef Posted June 8, 2001 Share Posted June 8, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Yosoce: I think it would be cool if you could choose a battalion or company or combination of units that actually saw action in WWII and used their order of battle. Obviously not every company could be chosen, but with just a couple of you Grogs rummaging around Im sure you could come up with a "timeline" for a couple of your favorite units. Example: You want to fight a company sized battle in June 1944. So, you choose from a list of companies and the computer gives you the force composition and strength that the unit actually had at that time. You could even add a realistic armor force by attaching part of an armored section that was nearby. Now I know this sounds like way too much information to realistically have, but in reality all you would have to do is read the battle reports for a unit to find out what its composition was and what was nearby.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> If BTS were to allow importable files into the scenario editor as I'd asked for then I could write an editor that would allow you to design a particular historical force, and let you 'plug it in' to any scenario. Additionally, those grogs out there could release these files and there could be collections of "historical OOB files" out there like mods now that you could plug into scenarios as wanted... [ 06-08-2001: Message edited by: SenorBeef ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Heidman Posted June 8, 2001 Share Posted June 8, 2001 Bump. Interested in what Steve has to say about my proposals... Jeff Heidman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Dorosh Posted June 8, 2001 Share Posted June 8, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Skipper: > OBs for this small of a force are in > general very poorly documented. :confused: OBs of every unit from platoon upwards were documented in the end of every day.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Good luck finding the information. It's an interesting idea, but there would be no way to research this. You would have to consult many different sources - all primary ones, as there are no books that I know of that deal with things at the platoon level. Most regimental histories won't even tell you the names of the company commanders, even if there were only four companies! Canada had thirty four rifle battalions in Northwest Europe from June 1944 to February 1945, with 13 more coming from Italy in March. Multiply that by 4 companies by 10 months.... ...and even then you only have a general overview of a single month. Those companies fluctuated greatly over the course of a month. If you picked a June scenario for an Allied rifle company, what would you get? They were at full strength on 6 June, many were no doubt depleted on 7 June, and back to near full strength on say 17 June, etc. The suggestion of finding info like this on a website is a good one, but it sounds like a lifelong project for someone, and in the end, kind of irrelevant. If you are going to the bother of finding accurate order of battle info for one side in a scenario, the odds of you researching the opposing German force down to the daily strength returns is pretty slim. Unless you are travelling on a daily basis between the Bundesarchiv and the National Archives in Washington (or London or Ottawa). I agree with the others who have suggested allowing depleted forces to be edited in the editor. If anyone has compiled info like this and placed it on a website, I would be interested in viewing it - they would have done the historical community a great service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew H. Posted June 8, 2001 Share Posted June 8, 2001 I don't know that I would use the "in combat"feature much, but I think it could be a useful feature. But I would definitely use the "variable unit quality" function, since I believe that most US platoons in the CMBO time frame should be made up of green/regular mixes. Green/regular is not a bad platoon makeup for Germans later in '44, either, although I think that it would also be common -- given how Germans handled replacements -- for there to be more uniformity in platoons, and but less uniformity across platoons. So a more realistic way of depicting a regular US company in Dec. 44 might be to have each of the three platoons consist of two regular plus one green squad (and this could, of course, be randomized a little more); whereas a regular German company might consist of two platoons comprised entirely of regulars, plus one platoon comprised entirely of greens. That's not entirely realistic for the Germans, since I don't think that they really substituted completely new units in at the platoon level either. More realistic would probably be two regular platoons (say rifle) plus one *different* green platoon (say VGSMG). Although maybe the most realistic way to do things would be a combination of both of Jeff's ideas. A regular US company might end up being 2/3 regular, 1/3 green, as described above. An equivelent German unit would consist of all regulars, but with missing squads (say, 2 reg. platoons plus 1 additional squad). This would simulate the US replacing troops with greens, and the Germans using new troops to make entirely new formations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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