Night Battles

[76mm]

I'm playing a home-grown campaign game in which either side can attack at night if they wish. Night battles obviously greatly reduce visibility (and fields of fire) and thus seem to greatly favor the attacker. Night battles in CMBB don't reflect their great disadvantage--the great loss in command and control. I'm thinking about imposing some house-rules to make it more difficult for the attacker to control his troops in night battles--maybe adoption of the "Iron Rules" under which a player can't go above elevation 1 or 2 (which I usually avoid because it is such a pain). Another thing to try might be to make different wings of the attacking force enter as randomly-arriving reinforcements. Has anyone else figured out a good way to impose a little chaos on night batttles?

[John Kettler]

76mm,

The system already does a very good job, IMO, in modeling some of the issues of night/reduced visibility combat. If you've never had your troops fire on each other, you probably haven't played enough night battles. Troops get pretty "windy" at night, too, and it doesn't take much to discombobulate even good ones. Remember, too, that if it's dark enough, on board mortars are going to be badly degraded or may not even be able to fire at all, because of a combination of command radius and minimum range issues.

If you need a refresher course on how messy and chaotic night battles can be, may I refer you to the notorious Sounds in the Night from CMBO ROW?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Other Means]

I think the random re-enforcement idea sounds good. It would simulate higher order command SNAFU's.

You might give the defenders some mines as well.

[76mm]

Dear JK,

I admit that I have not fought many night battles, and in the ones I have fought, I haven't encountered much in the way of friendly fire. From what you say, it sounds like command ranges are reduced and morale is generally lower, so that helps, but it doesn't really capture the kind of problem that I have in mind, where a platoon or company gets lost and stops for 15 minutes (throwing off the scheme of manuever or fire support) or perhaps then sets off in the wrong direction altogether. From what I've read, it seems like the biggest problem with night battles is just getting your men within range of the enemy. While maybe on small maps you could rationalize that everyone on the map had already overcome this obstacle, I play on 3km x 3 km maps and it seems awfully easy to maneuver everyone just where I want them. It would be cool, for instance, if units in CM night battles just stopped moving for 10-15 minutes while the lieutenant argued with the NCO about the heading for the objective...

[Joachim]

Not with borg spotting...