Casualty Rates

[Falcon988]

I've been running through the campaign chronologically on the Allied side and have noticed something interesting. During the Operation titled "Blitzkrieg" I lost 301 men killed and another 300 wounded. Basically 1 for 1. Yet just recently I was attacked by a small mechanized force and had 8 men killed, 31 wounded which is practically 1 killed for every 4 men hit. I am very interested in knowing & understanding the reason for this sort of killed/wounded ratio.

[Slappy]

It's random.

[offtaskagain]

Historically the average is something like 2 or 3 WIA for every KIA.

[Meach]

I wonder if various types of combat influence the casualty rate i.e in one game I had masses of hand to hand combat raging over a town centre and the kill to wounds was almost 1:1 but on open long range maps the kills to wounds were like you say, Panzerwerfer, 1:3. Could this be the same with things like flamethrowers? Just an idea as I have no proof only that i study the AAR's maybe a little too much

[Malakovski]

I've noticed that ops seem to have 50/50 kia/wia rates whereas battles have a much lower ratio.

I suspect men who return to duty are not counted as wia, to prevent them being counted twice, should they be wounded again...

[Slappy]

Perhaps my post was a little cryptic. I know that in CMBO, the engine just calculated randomly the KIA percentage out of the casualties. Some fairly evil testing was done to confirm this (pounding a company on an island with 8" naval guns for 15min then following up with FTs on area fire to give only a 50% killed to casualty ratio).

It is possible that this was updated in BB, but I don't remember seeing it on any of the feature lists.

I also don't know anyting about ops.

[SgtMuhammed]

I doubt this was something that BFC spent any time on. It worked for CMBO so why spend the effort to change it when there was so much other work to do.

[V]

I don't think it really matters at all in a single CMBB battle.

As far as the game is concerned, being wounded and being killed are the same thing.

I like the way it is handled now.

[Joachim]

Some (lightly) wounded come back during the operation and are not counted as wounded afterwards (except if they get wounded again till the end). You can see this when comparing the losses of single squads at the end of a battle with the begin of the next.

Gruß

Joachim

[ May 19, 2003, 04:13 AM: Message edited by: Scarhead ]

[MeatEtr]

Originally posted by Slappy:

Some fairly evil testing was done to confirm this (pounding a company on an island with 8" naval guns for 15min then following up with FTs on area fire to give only a 50% killed to casualty ratio).

Ahh, evil? Yes, but very fun.

[Chad Harrison]

You beat me too it Scarhead. You do have to remember that in a operation some of those men come back. So during an operation IIRC the battle end screen lists how many casulties you had in this battle, but how many KIA's you have had the entire operation {correct me if Im wrong}.

Chad

[SgtMuhammed]

I think you are right, which explains the really wierd numbers you can get sometimes.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Chad Harrison:

You beat me too it Scarhead. You do have to remember that in a operation some of those men come back. So during an operation IIRC the battle end screen lists how many casulties you had in this battle, but how many KIA's you have had the entire operation {correct me if Im wrong}.

Chad

Not exactly. The battle report tells you how many people are missing from the strength you started with (not considering you run any units off map, not considering immobile tanks, not considering the men ok from squads that lost most of their strength and were sent rear between battles. I do not know what exactly happens with these - neither the wounded, KIAs nor "ok" men.)

The battle screen tells you how many people are still wounded and how many are killed at the end of that peculiar battle. Those wounded in earlier battles and not yet back to the battle are counted as casualties.

You start the op with a plt: HQ = 4, 3 squads at 10 strength.

In battle 1, you lose only 4 men of squad 1, 1 of them is dead. Result: 4 cas = 3 wounded, 1 KIA

For battle 2, 2 of those returns. Nobody gets injured. 4 -2 = 3 cas, 2 wounded 1 KIA.

Battle 3 sees heavy fighting. Squad 2 is wiped out, with 2 of them KIA. Sqaud 3 counts 1 wounded, 1 KIA. 2 + 12 cas, 1 + 3 of them KIA, 10 wounded

Battle 4 is lull again. 2 wounded return, no new casualties. 12 cas, 4 KIA, 8 wounded.

Operation ends.

If you look at the example, each battle has a "Kill ratio" of 1 killed for 3 wounded (For the less mathematically gifted among us: 0*1 killed on 0*3 wounded for battle 2 and 4 ). The operation has a ratio of 4:8 or 1 killed for 2 wounded.

Gruß

Joachim