Casualties in QBs

[andhen2003]

For the first time in playing a PBEM quick battle, I chose 10% casualties when setting up the battle. Surprisingly, my opponent lost target reference points, trenches and barbed wire as "casualties". I lost some infantry and a gun, which makes sense. It doesn't make sense to me that defensive fortifications -- and it certainly doesn't make sense that TRPs -- should be subject to a casualty penalty. Can anyone explain the logic of including these items in what can be lost through chosing x% casualties when setting up a battle? :confused:

[Redwolf]

It's just applied to everything. I don't think anybody really thought about weighting or exclusions.

[andhen2003]

OK fair enough. How about I open this up a bit though and ask how you more experienced players use the casualties option in setting up quick battles. I thought it's a useful way to prevent domination of high cost ubertanks, since you're less likely to purchase one if you can randomly lose it. Is it commonly used?

[Joachim]

Medium or huge battles:

2000pts ME, no casualties

1 Plt of 5 Panthers: 1030 pts

4 Panthers: 920 pts

(from memory)

Probably can't afford a plt and even 4 will leave you without much inf.

2000 pts ME, 20% casualties = 2500 pts

1 Plt of 5 Panthers with 20% casualties = (averaged) 4 Panthers for 1030 pts.... and you might even get a full inf bn (with organic arty and guns) for those 1470pts left.

Small battles:

If you play small QBs where you can't get plts of Über-tanks, buying them is a gamble.

Gruß

Joachim

[YankeeDog]

I use it alot because it forces players to be redundant in their force selection and generally discourages "cherry picking" the perfect force combination. It definitely does disourage the kind of pell-mell mixed unit/vehicle selections you see in a lot of QBs. If you're counting on having that one Tiger for overwatch, and you lose it, you're in big trouble. . .

When playing QBs, I usually play about 20% casualties. For the most part this works well and my opponents and I have fun battles. Sometimes, one side or the other does get kind of screwed by the casualties 'die roll'. The worst is when you're playing a smaller battle and have the money to by only one artillery spotter, and you lose him before the battle even starts. You then end up missing an entire arm of a combined arms force. Casualties works better in larger QBs where you can have redundancy across the combined arms spectrum.

In general, I play friendly matches, though, and we don't get too worked up if the QB isn't 100% 'fair'. We play to win, but part of "winning" can be managing to pull of a draw, or only a minor defeat, when you get a "bad hand" with the casualties die roll or the map generation.

In the future, though, it might be nice to see a bit more sophistication in how casualty percentage works in QB. For example, Arty spotters might have a chance of losing a tubes or two, representing manpower/equipment losses in the firing battery itself, and tank crews might have a chance of starting the battle missing 1-2 crew members (which was not uncommon IRL -- this would also require a more detail model of how effective a tank fights when missing 1 or 2 crewmembers). Adding things like this would reduce the chance of totally losing very important units, since more of the 'casualties' would be reductions in effectiveness and/or crew.

As far as fortifications, I suppose it's not *completely* unrealistic to include them in possible 'casualties'. After all, bunkers have to be built by someone, wire has to be laid by someone, etc. Loss of these units could represent the loss of the manpower needed to build/prepare them. Overall, it might be better to exclude them, though. Reduced strength units especially tend to rely on fortifications and static defensive units.

Cheers,

YD

[Redwolf]

I don't like this option. It leads to some unfun oddities like you could get no artillery support at all for an attack if your spotters draw the short match.

But then in CMAK I don't use buy-my-forces anyway because of the Allied artillery pricing which makes heavy artillery more affordable for the Germans than the Allies.

[xerxes]

I almost always use casualties (20-30%) when I play a QB. I like a little randomness, adds spice.

[YankeeDog]

I have to say I agree with Redwolf's points here.

I'm kind of disappointed with the Allied OOBs in CMAK. The Artillery price issue is one big problem, but there are others.

One other big QB pet peeve of mine: it's impossible to buy US Armored infantry without being forced to purchase enough Halftracks to transport the whole Platoon/Company/Battalion. This makes them an extremely impractical purchase for QBs. I don't think it's actually even realistic to force a US Allied player to always buy transport for his armored infantry -- espeically by mid-war HTs were mostly used to transport infantry and supplies to jump-off points (i.e., the CM setup zone), and not as AFVs in "hot" engagements.

I would definitely appreciate the option to purchase US armored infantry without the full complement of Halftracks. A few HTs to move mortars, MGs, spotters and the occasional gun is nice. Late game, a couple of M3A1s can even be useful as MG wagons to gun down enemy stragglers. Great flocks of thin-skinned Purple Heart Wagons are a waste of points, though.

Oddly enough, the Allies in some ways are actually penalized for being better equipped and supplied than the Germans!!

Anyway, I digress. For these and other reasons, if I want to play a buy-your-own QB, I usually play CMBB.

Cheers,

YD

[andhen2003]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

it's impossible to buy US Armored infantry without being forced to purchase enough Halftracks to transport the whole Platoon/Company/Battalion. This makes them an extremely impractical purchase for QBs.

I usually play the Germans in QBs so I'm not sure, but isn't this just a problem if you select combined arms? if you chose infantry only do you have the same issue? For the Germans there's always the choice of whether to use companies w/ or wo/ transport in CMAK even w/ combined arms selected.

[Redwolf]

The British battalions are also almost non-purchasble due to various junk included that had no place historically (see bug threads no buried deep under the earth of the CMAK forum) and the fact that gammon bombs were removed from the British between CMBO and CMAK.

[Carl Puppchen]

As to the point that using casualties adds spice, why not go all the way and use "random" for the selections. Now that adds a lot of spice

[securityguard]

Casualties don't just make the game less predictable, but also more competitive. You don't have to use incredible amounts (30% or more) to add spice either, 10%-20% does the job nicely and usually doesn't mess up your forces that much at all.

When I play 30% or more, I usually give it to both sides (meeting engagement) OR the defending side - NEVER the attacker. I still give the attacker 10% or so, just to ruffle up his platoons or support weapons.

If you buy intelligently the purchasing screen becomes much less like a roulette table. It puts the "cherry pickers", like yankeedog says, in their place after a few games.

After playing CMBO for 2 years almost with no casualty options I can safely say that I got fed up with playing the exact same game over and over. Almost every QB felt the same in that game due to the lack of rarity and casualties. CMBB and CMAK rarity / casualty options are so awesome that I never play without them.

Biggest problem with casualties is effecting some support weapons - namely mortars, sometimes bazookas. It should just get rid of that weapon completely instead of making it almost completely useless, so you can get more guys in a squad or other support weapons. I am not sure how casualties are calculated though so maybe that isn't possible.

[ July 10, 2004, 02:09 AM: Message edited by: securityguard ]