Wounded as Prisoners

[Cpl Steiner]

Here's an idea I'd like to see in the next version of the game engine.

At the moment, no distinction is made between wounded and KIA. This causes a number of problems. The biggest is the prisoner count when one side surrenders. This is only ever made up of healthy enemy soldiers. What about the wounded? Are we to believe they somehow manage to crawl back to their lines?

Another problem is the visibility of some wounded. For instance, if a tank is blown up and goes on fire, the crew do not escape. However, if you check the AAR after the battle you will see that some of the crew are actually only wounded, not KIA. Where are they? If they are in the burning tank, they should be dead. If they got out, they should have become visible on the map so they could be either captured or killed later.

I think the game engine should track all casualties to the end of the game. I'd have three types of casualty: Lightly Wounded, Seriously Wounded, and KIA. This breakdown would be shown in place of the casualties figure that shows for each unit at the moment.

Lightly wounded would have half normal firepower, or a reduced chance of contributing fire to each attack, whichever was easiest for the game engine to handle.

Seriously wounded would have zero firepower and would be immobile. However, two men (either healthy or lightly wounded) could move a seriously wounded man as if he were a heavy weapon like an MG.

Thus, a squad with one or more seriously wounded could move slowly (also tiring more quickly) if sufficient men were available to carry the seriously wounded. However, the men doing the carrying would be unable to contribute their firepower to any attack, whether moving or not. They'd be too busy looking after the injured.

If a vehicle caught fire, a crew unit would bail out consisting of the lightly wounded and any seriously wounded up to their carrying capacity (i.e. up to half the number of lightly wounded). Any seriously wounded left in the vehicle would automatically become KIA. These men, though ineffective as combatants, could subsequently be captured or killed, so the owning player would have an incentive to move them to safety.

If at any time a seriously wounded man had less than two men looking after him, he would have a chance of dying that turn from his wounds. The player would have an incentive to keep his wounded alive, as seriously wounded would count as only half a casualty to the enemy.

As can be seen, seriously wounded men would slow down the rest of their unit, so the player would need the option of abandoning these men so as to continue the attack. The "split squad" order would be modified for this purpose, as described below.

At present, it divides the squad into an assault group and a long-range weapons group. The modified order would also try to put any lightly and seriously wounded men with the long-range weapon group, leaving all the healthy men in the assault group. Of course, if there were too many wounded, some might have to go with the assault group.

Of course, the player might not have the luxury of allowing so many of his fighters become non-combatants looking after injured colleagues. He might have to leave the injured behind and hope they survive on their own.

To facilitate this, a new "Leave Wounded" order would be made available. This would create a crew-sized unit consisting of all the seriously wounded in the squad. The seriously wounded count for the original squad would transer to the new crew-sized unit. To keep track of where these wounded originated from, the new crew-sized unit would have the parent unit's title in its own designation, e.g. 1st Squad, 1st Platoon, Wounded-A (-B, -C etc. for subsequent uses of the Leave Wounded order). As has been said, these men would have a chance of dying each turn due to being left on their own, making this a difficult choice for the player.

Now that the seriously wounded can potentially end up lying on the battlefield unable to move and on their own, you could add medic units to the force mix - something a lot of people have been asking for. These lightly armed crew-sized units would be able to merge with any abandoned seriously wounded unit, to form a new full-sized unit. Medics would be very good at stopping the seriously wounded from dying, so seriously wounded men with one or more medics would not have any chance of dying even if there weren't enough medics to move them all. Of course, if the ratio of medics to seriously wounded was 2:1 or greater, then they could move the seriously wounded to safety as well.

I think the features outlined above would add a whole new sense of realism to the game. Now you would have to worry about preventing wounded men falling into enemy hands and becoming prisoners, or dying on the battlefield. Likewise, you would have to sometimes leave men behind and press on with the attack, knowing that in so doing you might lose more men. The addition of medic teams would also add a new ethical level to the game.

If anyone has had similar thoughts along these lines then I'd love to hear them.

[MikeyD]

The only objection BFC may have with this idea is that it tends to 'bloody-up' their battlefield. This is more-or-less their objection to adding random civilians to the batttlefield as well. Instead of a tactical game it becomes more a blood sport game with the more perverse players going for the kill instead of the victory.

I rather suspect BFC has avoided tall chain-link stockade fencing (requested by players since the CMBO days) for a similar reason, a concern that with stockade fencing distasteful 'concentration camp' scenarios could start popping up.

[Cpl Steiner]

MikeyD,

Thanks for your response. I agree that this is a danger. However, at the moment the wounded just seem to be forgotten about. If you surrender, then they should at least be added to the prisoners total. If a vehicle literally blows up, then perhaps this should be reflected in the casualties by having the entire crew KIA. You could also prevent abuse to some degree by not allowing direct targeting of units consisting entirely of seriously wounded and men acting as medics.

[YankeeDog]

Honestly, detailed modeling of who is wounded to what degree, etc. just sounds like it would add another way too much micromanagement to a game like CM.

Generally speaking, in a typical Reinforced Company - Battalion-sized CM engagement, it can take me 15-20 minutes to plot orders for a turn as it is. For me, at least, having to deal with the added issue of wounded medical care and transport wouldn't add much to the game other than some additional mouse-clicks. I'm happy being the tactical commander and assuming that there's a battalion medical officer looking out for the less fortunate of my men, and commanding his medics and stretcher-bearers out there somewhere. I'm also perfectly happy to assume that some of my "casualties" are actually able-bodied men left behind to care for and/or transport wounded men. I have also always assumed, again as an abstraction, that part of a "Broken" or "Routed" unit's recovery time is caring for wounded men, handing them off to stretcher bearers to be brought to the rear, etc.

Adding more detailed modeling of wounded and medical care units also might open a whole Pandora's box of potential gamey abuse problems as well. Examples: using injured men as bait or decoys to allow able-bodied men to maneuver; using units like medical corpsmen and stretcher bearers as decoys at long spotting range (where your opponent is only going to see an "Infantry?" marker); using medical units as "human shields" (presumably units would not intentionally fire on medical units as this was against the Geneva Convention), etc.

I suppose adding an "Injured" catagory in addition to the current "Casualty" category along the lines of the old CC games might be kind of interesting. But again I don't think it really adds anything to the game to give the player direct control over what happens to lightly wounded men. It might be as simple as "Injured" men stay and fight with a unit as long as it's stationary, but are assumed to leave the unit for medical care in the rear as soon as the unit moves anywhere.

For the new model, I'm much more interested in stuff like relative spotting, radio net modeling, more realistic artillery modeling etc. The added realism of ambulances and stretcher bearers running around the battlefield is somewhere just above with accurate modeling of the European barn swallow's flight speed for me.

To each his own, I guess. Whether they're controllable by the player or not, I'm kind of neutral about whether wounded and KIA should be graphically represented. On one hand, I'm don't especially feel the need for extraneous gore in the graphics of the game. OTOH, the dead and dying are part of war, and so long as it's tastefully done, it could actually add an appropriate reminder of the sacrifice and suffering that the real soldiers went though.

Cheers,

YD

[Cpl Steiner]

YankedDog,

Thanks for another thoughtful response.

I agree that the micro-management and gamey aspects might be a problem. However, I am still concerned that the number of prisoners taken is not accurately reflected by the game due to the exclusion of wounded.

I also take your point that you can imagine that lots of so-called wounded are actually men assisting injured men to the rear. This is not something I'd actually considered before. If this is the case though, I would have expected a lot more men to appear as wounded than do at present. I would also not expect them all to show as wounded at the end of the battle.

As for making the battlefield look too bloody, I dispute that this would put players off. This is, after all, what war is like. In some ways the inclusion of wounded and medics etc. would add drama to a game, in much the same way that scenes like these add drama and pathos to a film like "Saving Private Ryan". It would bring home to the player that these are supposed to be real people, and each casualty is a personal tragedy for someone.

Perhaps some of this could be automated. You could have casualty collection points set up at the start of the game, which spawn medical teams that patrol the map looking for squads with lots of casualties. These would then be move back to the collection point.

I admit that I'm starting to have doubts about my original idea now, thanks to your comments. I still think though that a few bodies or bandaged guys about the place would definitely add to the realism, if that doesn't sound too morbid.

[Slappy]

I think that this is a lot of hassle for little improvement. Not to be contrary, that is just my opinion.

First, injured captures are only worth half healthy captures. This makes a ton of sense to me. Casualties were rendered combat ineffective for some reason. They probably have some sort of significant mobility or other problem. These POWs will be much less valuable to the capturing side. They will be difficult to move, consume more resources (medical attention, water) and will be less useful for interrogation, if they survive at all. Having them at half value makes perfect sense to me.

Second, with casualties happening all over the place, this could spawn an arbitrarily large number of units. A squad running across 100m that takes 5 casualties in a turn could spawn five sub units that would need morale, tracking, rendering and a host of other things. This is a lot of game engine time and player attention to devote to something that doesn't impact the game. Same with injured crew bailing out of destroyed AFVs. So what if they don't appear on the map? No other injured units appear.

Finally, this is all for something that does not impact the outcome of the game. I generally play for the challenge of whipping someone's butt. Injured reserve management has very little to do with that and would add very little to my game enjoyment. I lose points for losing men, and that I agree with. There should be a cost for loss of troops, but I don't really want to spend half my turns herding invalids about the rear end of the map.

On the other hand, I would like to see some more flexability in the points lost for losing men (probably a .5 to 2 multiplier) to reflect different situational importance of force preservation. Sometimes you have a batallion to throw away, sometimes you really need it tomorrow. I know flag value can represent this, but not as directly.

My thoughts.

[Hensworth]

How about a compromise :

When a squad or crew is captured all wounded soldiers are assumed to be still with them and are captured as well. That would raise the number of POWs to more realistic levels without impacting the game so much.

[MikeyD]

"As for making the battlefield look too bloody, I dispute that this would put players off."

i enjoyed Kill Bill Vol.1, I ain't no prude. it wouldn't put me off! I suspect i'm in the demographic middle for the game. The opposite demographic ends - parents of youngsters and the serious tactical theorists would find spouting blood to either be revolting or needlessly distracting.

I recall when BFC was heading from CMBO to CMBB one popular suggestion was to have an alternate 'wounded' set of clothing in the same way we've got 'damaged building'. A bit of grime. some spattered blood to replace the clean uniform graphic. I don't know why it wasn't implimented. most probably because there wasn't room on the disk, or possibly because it was simply shooter-game offensive.

[YankeeDog]

I do agree that a somewhat more detailed depiction of wounded/KIA soldiers, and even possibly medic teams and stretcher bearers, would be a nice "eye candy" addition to the game (though the term "eye candy" seems a bit inappropriate in this context. . .). I think most would agree that such a thing needs to be tastefully done - no "Duke Nuke'em" bood and gore. But some additional graphics that remind the player of the fact that these games model the carnage of war, and not a rugby scrum, would be welcome in my book.

My major concern is that I don't want to have to spend another 10 minutes ordering around my ambulances, medics, and stretcher teams after I'm done plotting my actual combat orders. While it's not tops on my priority list, I would certainly welcome a more detailed casualty/infantry behavior model that requires me to have a squad sit and wait for a couple of minutes while a stretcher team comes up to take away a couple of wounded, or temporarily detaches two healthy members of the squad in addition to a wounded man so they can help transport a wounded man back to an aid station, etc. Even if the net effect on combat were about the same as the present abstracted casualty/suppression modeling, it would definitely improve the realism/immersion factor in the game to see these things happening. It would also help players see exactly why a squad that comes under fire and is often combat ineffective for a while, even if it only takes one or two casualties. At present, all you see is a graphic of a couple of men lying down, and a marker that says "Panicked", or "Broken" or "Routed." This models the practical tactical effects reasonably well, but it's hardly the most graphically interesting or immersive element of the present engine. Some more detail in this area would be nice. Not necessary, but nice.

Whether or not this will be possible in the new engine is another question entirely. In addition to the whole gore/gratuitious issue, I think one of the big reasons many of these ancilliary elements were left out of the current engine was processor load and graphics ability - the additional calculations required to depict such things would have required substantially more processing and graphics power. Computers have come a long way since the release of CMBO, though, so with the new model, who knows. . .

Cheers,

YD

[MikeyD]

My fondest hope for the new engine is that there's provision for AI-controlled 'third parties' that are not controlled by either combattant. Sorta like a ground equivalent to airpower in the game now. So during a game you're liable to see civilians, or refugee vehicles, or medical teams, or livestock(?) moving in and out of LOS beyond anyone's control.

Maybe not much use in a WWII environment but increasingly necessary in complex modern combat situations.

[Big Jim]

The fact that medics and stuff aren't shown on the map is because they are out of your control, and hence should neither contribute to the number of units you give orders for or be able to appear as casualties on your side. Your victory (or loss) should be decided by the units you control ie. the grunts, not by how good a medical administrator you are. For that play sim-hospital.

Same holds for civvies really- although seeing such detail would be awesome, no self respecting soldier would waste perfectly good ammunition on civilians while there are still enemy troops firing back (the time period CM represents). Unless they had serious eyesight and/or psychological problems.

[Big Jim]

Although I see the point about modern situations- 'collatoral damage' is politically unpalatable these days. But would an AI controlled force act with any kind of sense?

Would the livestock have different 'skill' levels, and what impact would this have? Would 'crack' cows act more calmly under MG fire than 'conscript' ones? lol

[David I]

Sgt. Kelly has the right idea. I would rather have CMX2 concern it's self with other things like doing ALL of NW Europe 39 - 45, North Africa 40 - 43, East Front 40 (Finland) - 45, Pacific 37 - 45, and no shared BMPs! All much more important than quibling over a few percentages of WIA/KIA/CIA.

With all due respect...

David I

"Air Force Tank Divisions are the wave of the future! Thank goodness we Germans thought of it first!" Hermann Goering