Historical battle length, time compression, resupply in combat, pauses in battle

[Runyan99]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Here is a bit of data for four days of very heavy combat of 21. Infanteriedivision, 23-27/7/41.

Losses:

Officers (KIA/WIA/MIA) 5/19/1

NCO & OR (KIA/WIA/MIA) 90/399/21

Total 95/418/22

That is about 133 per day for the whole division. With 9 rifle battalions in the division, that works out to an average of some 15 per battalion per day. But I am sure not all nine battalions were engaged each day. If six of them were, it works out to about 22 per day.

In any case, this jives with (or is actually under) JasonC's figure of 50 per battalion per day.

BTW - where was this division on 27/7/41? What kind of fighting were they doing?

Edit - Oops, I didn't see that Jason already did the same analysis.

[ January 17, 2004, 04:10 AM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[Andreas]

Actually, there were nine rifle battalions, and a recce battalion that could have been engaged, plus a pioneer battalion and an AT battalion, and additional regimental companies. So the average is even lower.

The division was fighting on the old imperial border near Pleskau/Pskov (?) where it was trying to cross a river, while holding off Red Army counterattacks. One of the crossing attempts went wrong, and the bridgehead had to be given up.

No mention of peasants by the way.

[Runyan99]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Real tactical combat at the CM scale has more in common with a natural disaster than with a game of chess. You might as well simulate Mt St Helens erupting while trying to pretend a scientist measuring volcanic activity there was "in charge". It would be excruciating, not enjoyable.

For some reason, this seems like something my old military history professor (John Lynn at the University of Illinois) would say.

It seems to me obvious that the WW2 battlefield is an incredibly complex place. So complex in fact, that we here on the CM forums are approaching one million posts, and still we don't understand what happens on a battlefield for six hours. If we did...if we truly did...this discussion would not be taking place, and we would already have a computer game that perfectly simulates WW2 tactical combat. It would be fun, too. Or if we didn't have it, the military would.

In trying to comprehend, understand and predict the WW2 battlefield at the tactical level, things like combat effectiveness (or motivation), command and control, doctrine and psychology all go into a blender. What comes out is mostly gobbledygook. Face it folks, most of us don't know what the hell we are talking about most of the time.

Wasn't it Socrates who said, "It is a wise man who first admits he knows nothing"?

But there are wargames and scenarios to design. So Jason, let me ask you a question.

If I put you on the CMx2 development team tomorrow, what would you recommend? Given the difficulty in creating a tactical WW2 wargame that approaches reality and is yet playable, how could the current CM engine be best improved?

Sorry to put you on the spot, as it were.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

we here on the CM forums are approaching one million posts, and still we don't understand what happens on a battlefield for six hours.

Stop with the "we". I think JasonC pegged it quite nicely. My point is that you will never know, short of being in one. Though Marshall has some interesting things to say, discredited as he is. JasonC touches on the point that riflemen didn't fire much on the battlefield, this jives with Marshall and I meant to include that comment earlier. The riflemen really didn't contribute much to the enemy's death toll, and sometimes didn't fire their weapons at all. The majority didn't fire them effectively (in this case, effectively indicating the wounding or death of their target).

If we did...if we truly did...this discussion would not be taking place, and we would already have a computer game that perfectly simulates WW2 tactical combat. It would be fun, too.

No, because the point you continually seem to miss is that there are games, and there is reality. You will never have both. Concessions will always be made in order to present a game in a marketable format. I can live with that. I love that we don't control individual men, just squads and other units. That's part of the game. I like the strategy aspect.

If you were to have the real experience of a company commander in the form of a computer game, this is what it would be - totally realistic -

a) you would control only the Company HQ unit, everything else would be controlled by the Tac AI

your input would be limited to passing orders to your three platoon leaders, who would have the ability to override your orders

c) 1% of your games would involve controlling the company in combat. The other 99% would be

- orders groups with your platoon leaders, telling them how the next "show" will go, or telling them where your defensive positions are going tonight

- personal reconaissance of ground your men will be moving into

- liason with your company quartermaster re: ammunition and supplies

- orders groups with the battalion commander, as he tells you how the next "show" will go, or having him tell you generally where to station your troops for the night

- filling in casualty reports, writing letters to next of kin

- disciplinary matters, in conjunction with the company sergeant major (first sergeant)

- giving lectures to your troops on current affairs or other points deemed important by the CO (VD talks, perhaps, weapons safety, etc.)

- devising interesting training for the men when behind the lines so as to integrate replacements into the unit's way of doing things

etc., etc.

[WWB]

Scarily enough, I actually agree with Grog Dorosh for once.

IIRC, back in the amiga days there was a wargame that gave a very realistic feeling of being a brigade commander. Basically, you sat there staring at a screen and reports started coming in, of varying accuracy. You gave orders in response, which might or might not arrive and then which might or might not get executed. It was not a particularly fun game and definitely did not sell well. That company is now, AFAIK, out of business. Need I say more?

WWB

[Runyan99]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

No, because the point you continually seem to miss is that there are games, and there is reality. You will never have both. Concessions will always be made in order to present a game in a marketable format.

CM is a game. There is room for improvement.

How?

[JasonC]

First I want to address the propaganda nonsense about unarmed peasants sent to waste the German's ammo before the real attack. Um, just how dumb are the slavic untermenschen supposed to be? They won, you know.

Why would they send unarmed men when they could and did first train and arm them? The Russians turned peasants into soldiers on an epic scale, faster than anybody else did, faster than anybody else had ever even thought possible.

By December of 1941 their overall losses exceeded their entire army strength at the start of the war - but their army was just as big as it had been on the day of the invasion. Because they drafted, mobilized, trained, and equipped a force equal to their entire initial army inside of 6 months.

The men coming out of that firehose were certainly green, but they were not unarmed. They fielded almost 8 million Mosin-Nagants by the end of 1941, another 5 million during the war, over 2 million 1938 model MN carbines in the midwar period and 7 million 1944 model MN carbines in the last two years, plus around 7 million PPsHs, half a million PPs43 el cheapo SMGs, around .4 million SVT semi autos, and over a million DP and DPM LMGs. That comes to something like 32 million individual weapons.

It was simple to take the peasant off his farm, put him in uniform, issue him a weapon and give him some rundimentary training with it, and then rail a bunch of them to the front under a leader who listened to centralized orders. He was a lot more useful that way than unarmed.

So where does the propaganda come from? How about 15-20 million Russian civilian KIA during the German occupation. Gotta explain that somehow. Better to blame them darn commies and their ruthlessness, than to talk about how it really happened.

[JasonC]

What Michael is trying to tell you Runyan99 is that improvement to a game and becoming a more accurate simulation are two entirely different things. Chess is not an accurate simulation of medieval warfare - or politics - but it is an excellent strategy game. Improvement implies a standard and a direction, toward that standard. But the standard of realism and the standard of an enjoyable strategy game are not the same standard and they aren't even in the same direction.

A strategy game must depend on the mutual interaction of the player's decisions. The attraction is not photographic immersion and surround sound. It is matching wits with one other player. There can be randomness to make things less predictable, there can be some noise and constraints on either side's ability to influence events. But each side must feel itself to be, and actually be, in control of its side's actions, and the outcome must depend on whether one side was commanded better or the reverse.

This requirement of strategy games simply is not realistic for small enough scale tactical combat. It may be largely true at some high operational level, or in grand strategy (though there, the actors are often operating under some pretty tight constraints as to which courses of action are feasible. The middle operational level probably maximizes the importance of command, proper). But down in the area where friction is doing its utmost, it isn't remotely true. Not for the decisions made by single actors, certainly.

What tactical strategy games do is put the side commander in an unrealistic situation, in which he gets to make coordinated decisions for a whole span of actors on his side. And those decisions are given an artificially high level of influence over the actions immediately subordinate to them.

This effectively puts the side commander in the position of an "orchestra conductor" for scores of decision makers on his side. He gets to decide what no actual human being does. He gets to make all of his captain's decisions, and all of his lieutenants' decisions, and all of his sergeants' decisions. He gets to make them all at the same time, at his leisure, in a coordinated way.

And every one of those decisions then has a predictable, well controlled effect on immediate subordinates. The whole squad is always in one spot, doing exactly what its sergeant wants - except for brief and exceptional periods of rout or panic that effect single units only, due to enemy intervention only.

This is in no way realistic. It isn't meant to be. It is meant to make for a good strategy game. It is meant to put the side commander in control of developments, so that his wits matter. So when his enemy gets knocked on the head, it is the enemy commander's doing, not a blind fate.

I don't *want* an accurate simulation of WW II tactical combat. I'd sooner watch paint dry. I'd sooner have wisdom teeth pulled. I want a fun strategy game. Right now I've got one. Yes it can be improved and there are all sorts of improvements I'd like to see (smarter, scenario designer tunable AI e.g.). But those improvements are *not* all in the direction of greater realism. Simulation and game design are two different things, and I want the second not the first.

There is a reason to try to get some aspects of the real thing close to accurate. One wants the players to use tactics similar to the real world ones. One wants combined arms to function in a recognizable way. One would like the side commanders, though artificially in far greater control than their historic counterparts, to face somewhat similar problems and have somewhat similar concerns. We aren't playing "Go" here, with black and white stones on an abstract grid.

All of that said, if I were in charge of CMx2 developments what changes would I make to address the issues you raise? I would not increase scenario lengths. I would not make combats that are already 10 times bloodier than the real ones 4 times bloodier again by extending the game and providing regular "power up" ammo resupply every half an hour, letting them fire off a month's real world supply of ammo in each game.

I have already made suggestions on what I consider the critical areas to address unrealistic bloodiness in CM combats and predictable ammo limits. Since they have been made on scattered occasions in many threads, you probably haven't heard them. So here they are -

Track global morale as at present, or a "force readiness" indicator. When it drops below a level set by the scenario designer for that side in that fight, that side automatically offers ceasefire on each turn it remains below that morale or readiness level. These levels should in general be much higher than they are now. As in, global morale 60-70 for regulars is enough to invoke it.

The other side may continue the fight by simply not offering ceasefire himself - if his own morale is above his threshold. Or he can stop it by offering ceasefire - perhaps because he is already winning, or an attacker hasn't yet reached the flags, etc. If both are forced below their thresholds, a ceasefire automatically descends.

The men will therefore not allow themselves to be mashed together in annihilationist fashion. If one side is being wiped out and the other is untouched, they can keep going - and the side being wiped out is well advised to run away. But the last platoon swarming the last half squad around a flag at minute 28 is not going to happen. Attacks that cause excessive losses will be broken off. Defenders will "retreat" rather than lose their whole force.

Second, with ammo resupply the problem is not the absolute level provided by the *certainty* each side has about the other's ammo limits. This does create unrealistic effects. You can draw fire in cover and run the enemy out before attacking, knowing he will not get any more. The real guys did not know he wouldn't get any more. Nor could the side being "tempted" this way be sure he *would* get more.

The solution to this is to allow partial ammo resupplies as reinforcement events, in the hands of scenario designers. Just as now you can say "30% chance of a reserve platoon arriving, each turn from turn 10 on, until it shows up", you could instead say "10% chance of 25% ammo resupply every turn after turn 10".

By making the chance low and the amount modest, you can keep the side that might get it from counting on it and so firing far too much. But the possibility means the other side can't *count on* the enemy running out. He doesn't know the enemy's ammo resupply situation, either (unless his briefing told him, and his intel there might be wrong). That's number two.

Next I'd change the way artillery support is paid for. Right now the cost per shell is quite high, and as a result to make it pay compared to maneuver elements, people try to use their artillery as a "scalpel", drizzling in a few big ones to get as many kills as possible, in tight sheafs on tiny platoon sized targets. They think they need to hit a man with every shell fired. This is not a very realistic use of arty.

The design problem is, if you just make the shells cheaper then people will still use them in the micro-managed way and losses will be inflated. I think the solution is to make ammo cheaper if and only if it is bought for missions that are much less flexible. Here is how I propose to do that.

Make battalion FOs. Each with around twice the ammo of a current battery FO, and 3 times the firing rate (12 guns, typically). These can only fire together and as a "target wide" mission. They can use "map fire" normally. When adjusted on map their delay time is not short, on the order of 5 minutes, but otherwise they can be adjusted. They then cost only about 1.33 times what a current battery FO costs (maybe playtestings shows it should be 1.5, whatever). Thus the cost per shell is significantly lower, but so in the flexibility.

For the existing arty, the only change is that once the time gets to zero ("firing", rather than a few spotting rounds), the guns must fire for a solid minute before being adjusted. So you can't drizzle in 4 shells a turn for an endless series of turns. You can walk the aimpoint around as long as it is still in delay, or while spotting rounds are firing. But once you fire for effect, you do so for a minute (and change, typically) before adjusting again.

Notice how this artillery change may interact with the global morale change. Even momentary declines in global morale can sometimes have battle changing effects - can "persuade" a side to break off its attack or to retreat. A fire mission need not butcher every individual man on the enemy side to be useful. Some low loss tolerance defenders may get shelled out of their positions without annihilationist close combat.

Next I'd introduce an optional operational layer aka CM "campaigns", in place of the present, not very workable "operations" structure or in addition to it. Instead of playing this out on one map, I'd have a larger scale operations map, which could be created using the same editor but would represent 10 times the distances and one echelon higher unit sizes. A 5x5 large "tile" in the operational editor would be a square km, therefore. Forces present on such a square km would typically be a company or so.

I've run such a "CMx10" operational campaign, and it worked fine. It just took a fair amount of time because everything had to be done by hand in the editor, by a game "umpire" (me, in that case), using the editor as a "sand table". We simulated a day and a half of battle between a regiment and a reinforced battalion, generating 25 tactical fights in the process. There were a number of simple rules needed at the operational level, but it wasn't hard to come up with them. (Anyone interested can mail me for the ones we used).

One noticable aspect of a linked series of tactical fights is that force preservation immediately becomes a much higher priority. If the conditions aren't favorable you'd rather fight the following operational turn, not this one. You won't be able to if you get everyone killed in the meantime.

This is the realistic reason battles were not pressed "to the death" in a 30 minute time window. Everyone knew the war was going to last for months if not years. Nobody was willing to throw away their force in half an hour for one hill, knowing that. They'd just lose in the next day, if they hadn't kept alive the force that could keep it.

Unrelated to all of this, the other major change I've suggested for CMx2 is an "open, tunable" AI, aka an "AI editor". Not as scripts for the individual battle, but as weights given to considerations the strategic AI looks at when ordering its units about. (E.g. the importance of cover, of staying in command, vs. getting closer to flags, etc). Because I think the AI will only get and stay on a continual improvement track if more tweaking time is tapped into from the end user community, since it is not realistic to expect that amount of tweaking time to be put in by the overworked designers. Of course, it would involve some significant time investment to make an open AI in the first place. As would the operational level idea. The arty changes and cease fire stuff shouldn't be hard to include.

Those are my major CMx2 proposals. The global morale change players can experiment with already, by mutual agreement. The designer - or in a QB, player haggling - can set the "ceasefire" levels for each side, and players then just have to remember to abide by it as a rule, "honor system'.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

No, because the point you continually seem to miss is that there are games, and there is reality. You will never have both. Concessions will always be made in order to present a game in a marketable format.

CM is a game. There is room for improvement.

How? </font>

[Runyan99]

Dorosh, what are your suggestions?

[SgtMuhammed]

Maybe not WWII but an example of a typical firefight from a single infantryman's perspective. Basic infantry techniques have changed very little over the last 50 years so you can substitute your favorite WWII weapons and terms for my modern ones.

0600 recieved warning order to hold the crossroads town of Kittensee in Hohenfels.

0700 arrived at the town where scouts told us we had about two hours before likely first contact. We established an outpost line and began to fortify the town. My post was to be an outlying building that we turned into a bunker. The Americans couldn't just blast the town to rubble so we knew they would be forced to dig us out.

We spent the next hour and a half wiring and fortifying the buildings, sealing off windows and doors and establishing firing positions.

More reports came in from scouts that BLUEFOR (the Americans) were pushing towards a ridge due north and about 2500 meters from our positions. Made a few last minute preparations and then settled in to wait.

I was armed with an M4 carbine and about 400 rounds (MILES) and several grenades.

About an hour after the last scout report we here vehicle noises from the north. They stop and everything is quiet again. Another hour passes and I am really getting bored. "Come on! Let's do this!"

Another half hour later we get hit by smoke. I quickly move to a firing hole and peer through the fog. A couple of shapes loom out of the cloud and I shoot both of them. They seem to be pushing towards the building to my right.

The smoke clears a little (about 15 minutes have passed) and I make out a squad getting ready to rush around a corner. They appear to have forgotten about me, they pay for that. Three fall in my first barrage and two more who stayed in the open to return fire.

BLUEFOR pushes further to my right and finds a covered route (another 15 minutes have passed). I pick off another at extreem range (the smoke is clear now) but most make good use of the cover and push past me. I can hear fighting by other fortified positions but nothing pushes towards me or to the positions to my left.

A long pause (30 minutes at least) makes me wonder if the battle is over but then some sporatic firing breakes out. Single shots and the occasional burst continue for the next several minutes until there is a massive exchange as one of our central buildings is stormed.

The battle ends with the attackers controling 3 out of the town's 7 buildings. They have sustained about 20 percent casualties and nearly all of them have enough ammo to repeat the action again. I have expended about 30 rounds in about 10 minutes of contact in a battle that technically lasts over 3 hours. Not really a lot to build a game around.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

Dorosh, what are your suggestions?

Relative to what?! I disagree that there are problems on the magnitude that you suggest. You are saying, it seems to me, that in order to be "realistic", we need games that are 6 hours long.

The solution to 6 hour games is time compression.

You are thus asking for suggestions on how to make a 6 hour game not take 6 hours, and then telling the rest of us we have no idea how battles are fought.

I'm fine with the basic CM premise as is. I wish operations were more flexible with regards to redrawing the lines after every battle (ie allow for surrounded units, attacks from two directions, not allow map edge rushes to roll back the entire front, etc.) and you would have the perfect ability to model either large battles or small ones.

[Runyan99]

JasonC, thanks for outlining some very lucid proposals. I think that the "force readiness" proposal alone (I would prefer to call it "casualty tolerance", or something similar) would completely change tactics in the CM game world, because taking too many casualties might mean the end of the scenario. This would force players to use their digital soldiers a little more carefully (and dare I say it, realistically). It would no longer be possible to "mash men together in annihilationist fashion" as you put it. Of course, some people might not find this fun, so you want to make it an option, or I guess you could simply move the setting to 100% casualties, if you wanted an old time CM style bloodbath.

I think the possibility of some kind of limited ammuntion resupply during battles is also a key issue, for the reasons you outlined.

[ January 17, 2004, 08:59 PM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[Mad Russian]

JasonC that was quite a post.

I would agree with most of what you propose. The expansion of the simple battle, into a continuation of the war, is the best method of getting players to stop using the, "to the last man" tactic. I like the global morale idea. The level that a unit would disengage should have a lot to do with the experience level of the unit as well. Interestingly, in WWII, that sometimes worked differently for different armies.

The Germans were tougher to "break" the more experience they had. The British 7th Armored Division, on the other hand, was accused of not doing their part later in the war. They wanted to live to see the end. British Divisions later in the war were more reluctant to attack and UK divisions were often given the assault jobs. So sometimes there are unintended consequences of experience.

If the computer set an average level for disengaging for each experience level with the designer being able to adjust that level a much closer representation of actual combat results would be obtainable.

This has all been about infantry combat so far... But I see far too many tankers staying to the bitter end as well. Tankers would leave the field much more quickly than infantry and more situations affect them. For instance, are they in a town with no infantry support, is it getting dark, has an AT gun killed one or two tanks and still not be located?(Not in CM with borg spotting but that may go away in CMx2)

What I find most interesting is that, time compression is taken for granted in all levels of wargaming except tactical, and for some reason, it is not suppose to be used at that level. Everyone can see why it should be used in three month turns...who wants to sit around for three months doing a turn that took you an hour to complete? But take the same gamer and put them in a tactical situation and then the time compression isn't acceptable.

Maybe it is because at the tactical level the gamer comes closer to having the game compare to actual combat than at any other level. No wargame compares to combat realistically IMHO but tactical level combat can come close, You get the hours of boredom puncutated by the few moments of shear terror. That you can get. It is hard to represent the hours of staff work, the working out of managerial tasks; such as logistics, asset support, POL, beans and bullets, etc...

Runyan99 can you tell me why time compression bothers you at this level? What is so upsetting about it? I see where you think that CM doesn't portray WWII combat well, is that it? Are you wanting a combat simulator instead of a game? Or are you just wanting the game to add more bells and whistles that would slow down the action?

There have been numerous examples sited in these posts about how much is left out. What is not left out is the few moments of terror. And that is watered down. I for one have never felt the shrinking of my gut when a Tiger I comes around the corner of a building that a Sherman driver must have felt. But I am probably not going to die from that event like the Sherman drive in WWII probably was.

Intersting discussion that you started here, but I'm not sure exactly what has upset you. If you look at my scenario, in the briefing that you read, I stated that the Germans took six hours to take the village. I didn't ever say that my scenario was trying to model that entire six hour period in 25 minutes. I'm not sure that you didn't think that maybe I was trying to do that. :confused:

Panther Commander

[Sailor Malan]

There are some good points made here, and I for one would not like to play realistic WW2 timescales on CM as in place now. Turn after turn of nothing much happening does not make for a good game. In order to play 'realistic' combat timescales, I think CM would need variable timescales (when nothing much happens, turns cover 10 minutes, and get interupted if new contacts are made etc). Then, end borg spotting, and limit the players ability to issue orders to be via the command chain (player can order Coy HQ and anything in command from it directly, but anything else via much longer delays - say 5 minutes per 100 meters from Coy HQ)

I think an interesting simulation/experiment could be run. Set up a QB ME or probe, or even an assault. Play with an Inf Coy, and see how long it takes you to reach objectives. Now repeat (with a very long duration set). Attach a sharpshooter to each HQ (and more than 1 to Coy HQ). They are only allowed to engage the enemy if they do it via TacAI - player is not allowed to use 'runners' to target manually. Write down the orders for each sub unit (these can have conditions, etc, but only based on what the HQ can 'see', or 'at turn x, do this') No FO can fire a mission unless a runner (sharpshooter) arrives to withing 10 m, from a HQ that is close enough to id the target, or the FO can see himself (say 200m for inf, further for vehicles). No unit can deviate from orders without a runner from Coy HQ arriving. There must then be a 2 minute pause whilst the conversation takes place. The sub unit may send a runner to request a change in orders to Coy HQ, but then the runner must return with the 'answer' before orders can be changed. The indivdual squads have to be in command control to have orders issued to them, otherwise rhe platoon runner must be used (with 2 min pause again). The game can only be viewed at view 1 or 2, and only from 'locked to unit'. Donate £10 (or $) to a charity of your choice for each friendly KIA, and £5 for each WIA.

Now see how long it takes you to reach your objectives!

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

JasonC, thanks for outlining some very lucid proposals.

Well, he should thank you for giving the braggart once more the chance to bring some excitement into his poorly life, by writing endless posts about only a game.

[ January 18, 2004, 08:06 AM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[Alkiviadis]

As I've posted before, I don't think time compression is a good idea.

The U S Army stresses the need for "Tactical Patience", with time compression this aspect of command is lost. The pyschological aspects of conflict are important, in this case, an impatient opponent hot for action, can be led by his lust into a ambush, etc.

I think a 'campaign' level however is an excellent idea, would impose a realistic disipline on the players for the reasons outlined above & make meta-campaigning much easier

[ January 18, 2004, 10:13 AM: Message edited by: Alkiviadis ]

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Runyan99:

JasonC, thanks for outlining some very lucid proposals.

Well, he should thank you for giving the braggart once more the chance to bring some excitement into his poorly life, by writing endless posts about only a game. </font>

[Schoerner]

Oh, sorry.

How could i forget the even poorer life of Dorosh?

[Runyan99]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

Runyan99 can you tell me why time compression bothers you at this level? What is so upsetting about it? I see where you think that CM doesn't portray WWII combat well, is that it?

Yes. I'll try to explain why I think this is a problem.

First, maybe I should attempt to define exactly what I mean by 'time compression'.

Time compression is when something happens in-game, in less time than it happened in real life.

Thus, if the combat for village X occured over the course of three hours, time compression is wrapping that same event up in a total of 40 minutes.

What I find most interesting is that, time compression is taken for granted in all levels of wargaming except tactical, and for some reason, it is not suppose to be used at that level. Everyone can see why it should be used in three month turns...who wants to sit around for three months doing a turn that took you an hour to complete? But take the same gamer and put them in a tactical situation and then the time compression isn't acceptable.

It isn't about playing time. A strategic level game that attempts to simulate three months of real time per turn might take an hour for the gamer to actually plot, or watch, or whatever. Obviously, the gamer isn't going to sit in front of his computer for three actual months every turn. This isn't what I mean by time compression. The game simulates three months of real time as three months of game time. There is a 1:1 time relationship within the game. I mean, you will only be able to accomplish in one turn what was actually achievable in three months historically.

To illustrate, a strategic level game which compressed time would allow the Barbarossa offesive to progress from Poland to Moscow in two months. Historically, it took closer to six months. Show me a strategic game which allows the Germans to march from Brest-Litovsk to Moscow in two months, and I will show you a game that isn't representing reality in some significant way.

Back to CM. If I can take village X in 40 minutes, but the historical engagement took three hours, then there must be some significant difference between the game I played and the reality of the situation it claims to represent.

What is this difference? How exactly does CM differ from, or distort, reality? This is the question I am really trying to answer in this thread. The answer is complicated and multifaceted.

The reason that I am on Holy Crusade against time compression in CM is that I suspect it alters tactics fundamentally.

That is to say that the CM tactics I use to take village X in 40 minutes are probably not be the same tactics which were used historically. How can they be?

If the game plays out in less than a third of the time of the historical reality, then I suspect that the game isn't very realistic, and that the game does not represent reality in a meaningful way. It is hard for me to believe that my 'battle for village X' game is realistic, just as I would have a problem with the strategic game which allows me to take Moscow in two months.

I play CM because I am interested in history, particularly military history. I play CM because I like to experiment with weapons and tactics. I find it interesting to learn about tactics and doctrine, and then see if I can apply those ideas on a digital battlefield.

If CM isn't doing a good job letting me explore these questions, if the tactics involved aren't realistic, then I might as well stop wasting my time and do something else. I'll wait for Rome: Total War to be released, and start exploring a different historical period.

I do believe that the first best step towards better reality in CMx2 is to start simulating engagements in the amount of time that the historical record seems to indicate. I do believe we need to ability to better simulate time periods in the hour, two hour, and three hour range. (Longer engagements, in the six hour to all day range seem to be made up of several of these shorter engagements, with battlefield wide pauses in between, as best I can tell).

Now obviously we do not want to do this in one minute turns. Nobody wants to tackle a 360 turn game. Nor do we want an all day engagement to actually take the gamer 24 hours to play.

But there must be solutions to these problems. Longer, or variable-length turns are a possibility on which I have some ideas. Sailor Malan just touched on this also.

Are you wanting a combat simulator instead of a game?

Me personally, I would prefer to move in the direction of simulator. I understand if not everyone feels the same way.

[ January 18, 2004, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[JasonC]

On the MILES gear example, I understand it was meant to point out the long periods of boredom the action was scattered within. But I point out such engagements are unrealistic themselves because the consequences aren't real. Which strongly pushes them toward "annihilationist" outcomes.

In the example given, the narrator takes out 8 men with 30 rounds. In WW II, the same number of casualties inflicted typically took not 30 rounds, not 3000 rounds, but more like 80,000 rounds. That is, the average round fired was thousands of times less likely to hit someone. Meaning the typical targets were thousands of times less exposed.

They did not risk themselves that much, because the consequence wasn't a buzzer going off and sitting out the rest of the exercise, it was intense pain often followed by sitting out the rest of existence. I also note that nothing average can involve typical single soldiers racking up 8 kills and still result in a war that lasts years rather than one afternoon.

The typical single soldier did not rack up 8 kills in the entire war. The typical single soldier might rack up 1, or might fail to reach that level. Since capital intensive means, heavy firepower, over the horizon arty and air etc, inflicted half to three quarters of the casualties, it did not actually reach that level. The average soldier in WW II did not succeed in wounding anybody, in his entire war, on his own. (All children aren't above average in Lake Woebeggone, either).

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

I don't want to go off on a huge rant, but I am going to beat my drum again about the issue of time.

Panzer Commander just posted a Mortain battle at the Proving Grounds. He mentions that the historical battle for the particular village took 6 hours.

I wondered...how would he chose to translate this into a CM scenario? How did he simulate this 6 hour time period? How long was his scenario?

25 turns, variable.

Another example of extreme time compression in the CM universe.

Now, I am not indicting Panzer Commander for his design choice. Time compression is not a bad thing, per se. It is a wargame, and he can do whatever he wants with his scenario.

But, I wonder. Do all of these short scenarios warp people's understanding of history? Is history shaping the design of our wargame, or is our wargame shaping our understanding of history?

I suspect CM is shaping people's conception of WW2 combat. Most CM players seem to believe that WW2 was fought in 30-40 minute chunks. After all, most scenarios are 30-40 turns long, and small arms ammo in CM can only sustain 30 minutes or so of actual combat.

But when you read the history, battles take hours. A typical village or small town assault seems to have averaged 4-6 hours historically. I am also reminded again of John Salt's data, which showed the average cross country advance of 800 meters (in France or Italy) took about an hour and a half.

Historically, things generally happened slowly. In CM everything happens quite fast.

This gets me back to the conclusion that we have a game of highly accurate mechanics that is typically used to simulate totally unrealistic battles. They are unrealistic because they are too fast.

Played any 6 hour CM battles lately? No.

What about CMx2? This is, I think, an important question for our wargaming future. How will our understanding of the pace of combat shape the next generation of the CM engine? Do we want another engine that tends to compress action into 20 minute, ASL like bits? Or do we want a system that can realistically encompass the 5 and 6 hour engagements so common at the company and battalion level?

Getting back to the present, and Panzer Commander's Mortain scenario. There is the option to simulate the engagement as an operation in CM. Break the 6 hour battle into six 40 turn battles. This is far more realistic than a 25+ turn battle, and is, in my opinion, the 'state of the art' in realistic scenario design for the current engine.

The offensive scenario was removed and in it's place is a HUGE battle that is 60 turns long. More to your liking I would imagine Runyan99. The new scenario is called "HSG Test of Courage." So go and check it out. See ask and sometimes yee shall recieve. Just don't get in the habit of asking too much...

Panther Commander

[Runyan99]

I did take a look. I have not yet played one of your scenarios, but I will say that it appears you are doing some nice work. The maps are particularly interesting.

With respect to my initial criticism - If I have had some infuence on your designs, if I have encouraged you to think outside of the 25-turn box, then I am pleased, and it makes me feel that perhaps this thread has borne some fruit.

[Runyan99]

My very first double post. Sorry. The forum goes to sh*t every night about 0200 my time.

[ January 24, 2004, 03:56 AM: Message edited by: Runyan99 ]

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

I did take a look. I have not yet played one of your scenarios, but I will say that it appears you are doing some nice work. The maps are particularly interesting.

With respect to my initial criticism - If I have had some infuence on your designs, if I have encouraged you to think outside of the 25-turn box, then I am pleased, and it makes me feel that perhaps this thread has borne some fruit.

VERY BIG GRIN!!! Sorry but you haven't.

I still look for the smaller level engagements. The scenario that replaced mine was done by another designer from the HSG group. We both felt his was a much better representation of the whole battle and not just a part of it. In this case my scenario came down.

I have a scenario that I am looking at where a Stug killed 8 tanks in "FIVE" minutes. (That is what his decoration read.) Now I'm not going to have a "FIVE MINUTE" scenario, which is what your theory would have me do, but I will add time to both sides of the engagement to bracket it, so to speak. So that I get the "FIVE MINUTES" that I want.

You should certainly play "HSG Test of Courage". It is done by HSG's best designer. And, you are in fact playing, or have at least looked at, one of mine. The operation "HSG First Town Liberated" is mine. Different for me, because I like smaller fights, but this is the only thing that comes close to doing this particular fight justice. Even then I had to use time compression.

The battle takes place on 6 June 1944. I used 5 games with 20 turns variable length for each. I did not make a 24 hour scenario although that would be interesting. You would see that there would be way too much combat for the time.

Each battle represents a time period of about 3 hours. I don't know EXACTLY how long they fought, I don't EXACTLY where every rifleman was stationed, I don't know EXACTLY when they ate, or slept, or anything else. I know a few variables out of MILLIONS of things, about that battle. That is the "MOST" any of us can know about any battle. Even if you were there, you don't know all the variables.

So the very best we can do is an approximation. My time lines for scenarios are just that, approximations. For that, you haven't made a dent in my designing philosophy.

HSG is a bit different than other groups, or maybe we aren't, in that we try to portray to the "best of our ability" the original battle. But I don't get bent out of shape if someone has some better information than I have. I don't really even care if you like it. What I will do, is tell you why I made a scenario, the way I did. You don't have to agree with it. I make the scenarios for me. I make ones I like. Then I share them with you. I'm not egotistical or stupid enough( :confused: ) to believe that everything I make is the best scenario ever put out! Although they are very close and getting better...

I would suggest that if you like longer scenarios stay with them. The designer of "HSG Test of Courage" does some of the best work I've played. And he specializes in larger scenarios and operations. So give that one a try. For smaller time frames give mine a try.

Panther Commander