How MGs will change - A Chicago AAR comparison

[JasonC]

Gentlemen,

Having enjoyed the afternoon at the Chicago face to face get together to see CMBB, I thought players might be interested in the following report. After plenty of fiddling around with and looking at other things, I decided to try a small, open steppe, all infantry QB, with the Russians trying to attack a German company position. I was especially interested in how much the MGs had changed, and what effect those changes had in practice on moving infantry over open ground.

I set the fight in November of 1942, the time of the Stalingrad counterattacks. The Germans were regulars, one company of infantry with 2 additional HMG-34s, an 81mm FO, 1 TRP, and 6 wire (which incidentally are cheaper now). The company was slightly depleted however - 8 squads and a few men missing here and there - another nice new feature. The Russians had the usual attack odds, green quality and infantry division force type, and a computer picked force.

For the terrain I picked open rural and flat, small size, and of course this was set in southern Russia. Boy was the result open and flat. There was one brush tile on the whole map lol. Also a road running across the axis of Russian advance. The sector was narrow and relatively long, with about half as my set up zone.

I put the wire in one strand over on the right, where the road stretched beyond my set up area. I left a short gap at the right end of the road, with the idea I could always shoot someone coming there and they would probably run off the map if they broke. Also a back way out of the wire. The left end of the wire ended at the road, which effectively continued a particularly open ground minor feature to my center and left. 100 yards ahead of the open left sector, I put the only TRP, with the idea of breaking up guys massed there to get around the wire.

Then I put my 4 HMG-34s in the rear corners, in 2 groups of 2. One was commanded by the company HQ, and also had the FO. The other was commanded by the MG section HQ (a nice addition to the company TOE, incidentally). My weakest, 2 squad platoon - which had a HQ with good command but little else - was put on the right behind the wire, with a reasonably long frontage. About 50 yards behind the wire. One platoon had a +2 morale leader, and it went on my left behind the route around the wire, forward, in an echelon left formation, "refusing" my left. The last platoon, with a good combat rating but only ordinary morale, was put in second line behind the other two - a bit more to the left - and about 50 yards behind the front platoons.

Then it was time to plan out the new feature of covered arcs. Which are a snap to use and great, incidentally. The two HMG pairs both focused on the gap to the left of the wire, the leftward one having mostly forward arcs for this, the right providing crossfire. They were set to open up a little bit behind the TRP, with the idea of pinning guys and letting them accumulate before calling down the mortars. The regular infantry all hide, but with covered arcs for the front two - covering the wire and small gap on the right or the small one, and the large gap to the left at about 150 yards for the large one.

That was the plan of the defense. The Russians appear and are in well above company strength. With 1.5 times points and greens vs. regulars, they in fact had better than 2.5 to 1 manpower odds (slight over 300 vs. 115). I will go through the events of the battle in a second, but first I must tell the result, and then offer a comparison to a second scenario, this time in CMBO, that I played when I got home.

The CMBB battle described above ended with 2, count 'em, 2 German casualties, out of 115 engaged. The Russians lost 180 men out of 302 engaged, and were defeated 99 to 1 in the final score.

Meanwhile, my CMBO test game (described next) had rather a different outcome. Using Brits in place of Russians and commanding them myself against a German AI, I lost 60 attackers out of 302, inflicted 70 casualties and took 16 prisoners, while 30 Germans ran off the map alive. The result was a major Allied victory, with a final score of 72-28.

CMBB, AI attacking - 1 to 99, 2% losses for defenders, 60% losses for attackers. CMBO, AI defending - 72 to 28, 74% losses for defenders, 20% losses for attackers. I'd call that a change.

In the CMBO version, the Germans had a company plus 2 HMG-42 teams added, 1 squad missing as before, and 116 men total. (No MG section leader, also no missing men here and there). The attackers were green Brits, 2 companies plus a 7th platoon, supported by 4 Vickers HMG and 2 sharpshooters (in two fire support groups, each 2xHMG, 1xSharpshooter, 1xCompany HQ).

The Brits walked up to 100-150 yards, veering right around the wire, and then the Germans opened up. The Brits replies started routing the Germans here and there within 2 minutes. Mortars came down of the TRP, but the Brits just scooted forward. A couple routed Brit squads ran off the map; one ran for an occupied foxhole and was shot to pieces, another ran to the rear and was rallied by a company HQ. Many were pinned or cautious.

But they just stopped and shot it out, mortars concentrating on the HMGs at the rear, and soon the nearest Germans were heads down, some hightailing it for the rear. Single squads rushed for foxholes; whole platoons targeted individual positions. The German position was rolled up, and soon the Brits were in vacated holes. The Germans opened up in minute 4. Some Brits were onto foxhole locations by minute 8. By minute 10, the back of the front line was broken and whole Brit platoons were in the foxholes, and the first prisoners had been taken. By minute 12 it was over.

Now, some of this was obviously command. I had the Brits, and did not shove HQs out front like the AI sometimes does. I stopped the light mortars and targeted MGs with them. I massed fire to support particular movements. But most of the effect stemmed from 3 basic causes. (1) men in open ground even in foxholes run when shot at (2) foxholes give relatively little cover, while the odds were steep (3) the reply fire pinned only a portion of the attackers, letting their replies suppress the defenders and snowball.

In CMBB, these things do not happen. First, the HMGs fire up to twice as fast as in CMBO. I had one HMG start with 105 ammo and it was down to 34 by turn 8, and it hadn't opened up until turn 3. As these were MG34s, their FP per burst was actually somewhat lower. But with enough targets in the open, they can fire pretty darn fast.

Second, the reply fire did not make units panic because they thought they had no cover just because the terrain type in the tile is open ground. That makes a big difference. No more crazy running around looking for non-existent cover. In addition, the foxholes were obviously providing better protection, although I didn't check a fog of war off case to see what the exposed number was. The proof of this is only 2 men hit in the whole fight.

Third, the pinning effect of the fire delivered was stronger than in CMBO. The HMGs alone pinned the better part of a company at 250 yards. Even with the defending squad infantry silent, the Russians could not just walk up to the perimeter to shoot it out with numbers from 100-150 yards. The units that did get close enough straggled in, piecemeal. It was relatively easy to open up with a platoon at a time when a few got close in decent order, and doing so put them back into a shambles rapidly. The "synergy" between pinning and artillery planning also worked. The targets of my 81s could not just scoot forward out from under them, because forward movement meant into HMG covered arcs which meant being pinned.

Overall, he never got close enough with enough men in decent order to have reply fire. Let alone enough to mass it and overcome the cover differential in sequence.

In addition to all of the above, however, there was another quite realistic aspect to the CMBB engagement. It was not all cakewalk. The MGs fire fast, and targets shot at pin more easily. Although you may not think of it that way at first, the interaction of these two is a much more serious ammo management problem. The pinned guys are farther away. You can hammer away at them a lot, but doing so will run you out of ammo. And they are pretty far away, so while you will certainly keep them pinned and probably break some, they will also rally some. Your ammo won't.

To deal with this, I had to use the covered arcs and choose when to fire with what. I had the HMGs switch to 250 yard range limits, then to 200 yard range limits. I had several jams at various times, including one occasion when 3 HMGs were jammed at once. I dealt with that one by ordering the reserve platoon to fire at will at that moment. The platoon covering the wire dropped to 15 ammo apiece, and so was ordered to fire only if someone reached the wire itself. The MGs fell to 30-35, and went quiet unless somebody made it to 200 yards in good order. The mortars were down to 33 rounds, one half-minute fire mission.

The point is, I could easily have thrown away all the ammo the defenders had without annihilating the attackers, if I had fired at will throughout. Because early pinning means longer ranged fire means fewer outright kills. There were still 120 Russians out there, as many as the defenders.

The whole defensive problem was much more realistic. And the attacker's problem was much, much tougher. Just bringing 2.5 times the manpower will not overcome the cover differential of foxholes vs. none. Defending HMGs have to be suppressed,or covered routes that avoid them must be found instead. They can mess you up in open ground too easily to leave them alone, because of how fast they can fire, and because of their abundant ammo.

All in all, I found it a dramatic improvement in realism. I hope this is interesting.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Most! I hope to see some of these features myself at ACTOR's home next Saturday.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Gyrene]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

JasonC,

Most! I hope to see some of these features myself at ACTOR's home next Saturday.

Regards,

John Kettler

I want a much longer AAR from you when we get done in Corona!

Gyrene

[Warmaker]

Interesting report. Sure would be interesting trying out those late war defensive scenarios...

[Andreas]

Warmaker, one can expect these things to change when you bring a platoon of ISU-152 or a company of IS-2 along.

Late war the Red Army got a lot better at what it did and an historical late war assault would feature the following:

1) more efficient and heavier prep bombardment and air strikes

2) integrated engineer assets (large numbers of flamethrowers)

3) integrated armour support

4) regular/veteran Soviet infantry

5) integrated SP gun support to dig out those HMGs.

6) much smaller frontage (about 500 yards to a battalion with all this support)

7) at least one battery of towed DF guns (76mm) and 45mm guns.

7) Immediate reinforcements from the regiment available in the form of armour, men, guns, engineer assets

8) Germans with lower experience levels, training in the Wehrmacht went down over time

9) Better staff work on all levels, in particular a better understanding of one's own capabilities and pitfalls

1-7 of these were a direct response to the problem of attacking a well-trained, dug-in enemy, and were based on 3 years of fighting.

Follow all this up with a tank army or two ready to exploit the breakthrough when it occurs, and you begin to see how the very short operations in Silesia, from the Vistula to the Oder, and for Berlin took place.

[ July 14, 2002, 05:27 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

[Psyched]

JasonC

Great report. I enjoyed it immensely.

I've got two questions:

1) Can you expound a bit on the new Covered Arc feature in CMBB.

2) Is there any type of HOLD FIRE order on the Order Menu to help with ammo management. From your report, it sounds like you can at least specify at what range to fire.

Again, thanks for report.

[Panzer76]

Thanks for the report! Keep em coming!

[André]

Jason, did get to see the use of trenches?

[JasonC]

Trenches, for Heinz - no, I didn't try them out. Good thought, they would have fit right in, I just didn't think of it. I did notice the shell holes, though, in other scenarios - hard to miss in some cases. One can specify how fought over an area is - the level of damage to the terrain. Rubbled buildings result, and lots of shellholes. The Russians could certainly have used some of those in my scenario, but I didn't give them any. Mu hu ha ha ha.

On Andreas comments - yep, you want all sorts of extras to make this kind of attack actually work. The frontage was properly narrow, incidentally, less than 500 yards. But the attackers want things like organic mortars (in cover or far back) to suppress the MGs, tanks of even the simplest kind for the same reason, direct fire arty likewise. Beat range with even longer range. Prep fire might help but I have my doubts about how much, unless you have an awful lot of it. Because just suppressing half the MGs for a few minutes will not make such an attack succeed, on its own.

On covered arcs and fire discipline, for Psyched - the covered arcs work by picking an initial location, then you drag to another location. Your planned fire arc is drawn interactively as you drag, so you see exactly what you will get (much like the LOS tool). You settle the second point and there is your arc. To change it, you clear the old arc (from the menu or one letter key) and just draw a new one.

Notice, you can therefore set the range as well as direction. You are not setting "posts" for a "rotate" command, but actual locations out in the fire zone. The fire arc is from left point in a semi-circle to right point, with straight lines from each back to the shooter.

So, when I first set up the defense, my HMGS had long arcs, out to around 150 yards beyond my wire. I pulled them in to 250 yards as ammo grew scarce, and voila, no shooting at more distant targets. If somebody is close enough they fire, if not they save their ammo. So it was e.g. trivial to give my low ammo rightmost platoon orders to fire only if someone actually made it onto the wire, by setting three short covered arcs out to only about 50 yards that covered the wire and my side of it.

Likewise, you can easily give an ambusher a fire arc that lets somebody step out in the open and make it 20 yards, says, before firing at him. If he stays back, you hold your fire. Guns and tanks also have a "covered armor" command, which works like covered arc but in addition waits only for armor targets, ignoring infantry. Very useful for gun ambushes.

I've also seen restricted arcs cause (realistic) problems, though, so you do have to be careful about whether you need them. You can give a tank a covered arc that you think covers the most likely area of threat, and then an enemy pops out 100 yards farther than you expected. That can keep you from firing back until the following minute ("looking the wrong way").

[YankeeDog]

Jason -

Thanks for all of the excellent information. Yours is the best description of the new MG modeling features I have seen yet - and that includes the reports from the powers that be themselves.

I know you have long advocated updates to the MG modeling in CM - your past posts on the subject have certainly been quite educational, and if I am reading between the lines correctly, you sound pretty happy with the changes. No model is ever perfect, but it sounds like things are a dramatic step forward.

If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me.

Thanks again,

YD

[Austrian Strategist]

Best CMBB AAR I have seen so far; you´d make a great FO.

[109 Gustav]

If you give green units a cover arc command, are they more likely than vets to fire outside the arc? I really hated this in CMBO, where you have to give units a 20m ambush marker if you really want them to open fire at 40m.

[Lee]

This is the improvement I most look forward to in CM2. In CM MG crews get

ripped off on their real capabilities. I'm glad to see that in CM2 they will

really get to show what they can do.

[Psyched]

Jason--

The info is exciting and much appreciated. It does make the wait even more excruciating, though.

One other question: Any word on reducing the "gameyness" of the absolute turn limits in battles found in CMBO? The ability to "run" an otherwise worthless unit up to a Victory Location on the game's last turn to throw it into question is a very irritating holdover from the old "hexes and 1/4 inch cardboard squares" era.

Some suggestions have included a "variable turn end" randomizer, or some calculation where a unit must be in the Victory Location for a specific amount of time.

I don't necessarily expect you to know the answer from your sneak preview, but I thought you might have heard the answer.

Thanks for your hard work and dedication!

[StellarRat]

Jason, Can you make a guess as to what will happen if the enemy attacker manages to hit your MG's from an unexpected direction (outside the pre-planned covered arcs)? How much of a difference does the covered arc make vs. a non-covered area? If the situation were reversed would the Germans fair as poorly as the Russians on the attack?

[ July 15, 2002, 12:25 AM: Message edited by: StellarRat ]

[109 Gustav]

Originally posted by Psyched:

...One other question: Any word on reducing the "gameyness" of the absolute turn limits in battles found in CMBO? The ability to "run" an otherwise worthless unit up to a Victory Location on the game's last turn to throw it into question is a very irritating holdover from the old "hexes and 1/4 inch cardboard squares" era.

Some suggestions have included a "variable turn end" randomizer, or some calculation where a unit must be in the Victory Location for a specific amount of time.

Answering on Jason's behalf:

A variable turn ending is in as an option for CMBB games. If you select a 20 turn game with variable ending, it will actually end sometime between turn 20 and 25 or so. If one of the flags is contested, this will extend the game further, though not forever. IIRC this one was one of the first new features that BTS told us about. It should make PBEMs much more realistic, though I'll probably still lose most of them.

[Thomm]

Does anybody know whether the AI makes good use of the `covered arc' order itself? With every radically new feature I am concerned that it might not get supported properly by the AI ...

Can covered arcs be set in the scenario editor?

Regards,

Thomm

[Redwolf]

It will be so hard to go back to CMBO after we tasted CMBB.

I'm on TacOps right now which avoid many of these problems, and even with that I am incredibly annoyed everytime I answer CMBO moves.

[JasonC]

On game ends - we did see the variable game end. There is one length that is the minimum game length, and the game can end that soon. But it can also go longer. So the length is listed like "20+".

On AI use of arcs, and AI in general - couldn't tell. With extreme fog of war, you can't tell many things you can tell in CMBO with fog of war on, let alone see what the AI is "thinking". Some other players reported that the AI was doing reasonable things, and one guy reported losing to it sometimes in scenarios he had designed.

I didn't see any marked change myself, so I am skeptical there is any big change there. At least in the scenarios I played myself, any human would have played better than what the AI tried against me. But then I had it attacking (part of one it was defending, but the previous player on my side had mostly won the fight already. That one was night, too). I expect it will defend better, just because attacking has become harder. To get a strong attacker, I expect you will still want to play humans, or to give the AI high odds.

As for what will happen if you get hit from outside your covered arcs, you clear them at the next minute to let your guys fire back. You don't want them fixated on a covered arc order if they are being hit from other directions. I did not see any deviation from the fire orders, and I did see (over a shoulder, in somebody else's game) one tank with its arc set too short engaged by a tank farther out, that got the drop on it as a result. So you don't just plop them down as a matter of course. Unless you need them, and really mean for the fire discipline effect to kick in, you lay off.

Setting arcs in the editor - didn't try it, but I doubt it. I set my arcs in game on turn one, not in the set up phase.

Would the Germans fare as poorly as the Russians with situation reversed? Yes, in that terrain I expect so, as long as the Russians had some HMGs (Vickers model being their standard type). The German MG34 has better FP ratings, but there is not as much difference was between the MG42 and the Vickers. And the Vickers has plenty of ammo to burn. The Germans will eat turf when fired on in the open as much as the Russians. Of course, that is what things like company mortars are for. Not to mention tanks.

[ July 15, 2002, 10:51 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by JasonC:

..as long as the Russians had some HMGs (Vickers model being their standard type).

Grog note: In all the texts I have seen (in English), the Soviet HMGs are referred to as Maxims. I don't know what they were called in Russian. [Edit: I looked it up and they were called the M1910.] Of course, both the Vickers and Soviet MGs were derived from Maxim patents...

Michael

[ July 15, 2002, 10:11 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[StellarRat]

Jason, Hopefully you won't mind answering three more questions about MG's in CMBB.

1. Does the covered arc have any other effect than to restrict the area in which the MG will engage targets (such as a better chance to hit or higher firing rate)?

2. You said the MG's fire more often. Does the firing rate change depending on the circumstances (like when the enemy about to overrun or when the target is far away?)

3. What about the vaunted "grazing fire" that many people seem to be concerned about about?

Thanks.

[ July 15, 2002, 04:01 PM: Message edited by: StellarRat ]

[Echo]

It sounds like we will soon have a new eutopia of infantry combat modeled. Everything else about the game is icing on the cake.

[JasonC]

To StellarRat - the firing arcs restrict fire to inside that arc. That is all. That was enough to give complete fire discipline control, and in addition - against green AI commanded infantry in open ground, anyway - was enough that I bet I could have herded the enemy infantry like so many sheep. Instead I chose to herd them this way - stay outside 250 meters, or outside 200 meters.

The rate of fire varied, but was occasionally far higher than in CMBO even at around 400 yard ranges, when the targets were in the open. I don't know if that was normal, a hot gun, the peak or less than the peak rate of fire, etc. I only did the one test, and not all MGs were firing the whole time because they were using their arcs to converse ammo.

I did, as stated, see one HMG go from 105 ammo to 34 or so within 6 minutes of firing time, which is around 12 shots per turn or one every 5 seconds. Which is about twice as fast as in CMBO. More detailed info about what the parameters and ranges of variation are for MG ROF, you'd have to ask the guys that wrote the routines, or do a lot more detailed testing.

As for grazing fire effects, I have no idea, as I already said. Extreme fog of war was on. I was not tracking the result of every MG burst - there were 300 of them in my little fight, so it would have been a fool's errand anyway. There were some occasions where the Russians were sufficiently bunched up that I expect fire effects on others near the target may have mattered, even the way things work now. But I have no direct knowledge of it. I was not on the receiving end.

[StellarRat]

Jason,

Thanks for your excellent report and information. :cool:

[ July 15, 2002, 08:10 PM: Message edited by: StellarRat ]