Vehicles/Armor without ammo can't hold VLs

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

That argument might work in an operational/strategic level game with 10+ kilometer hexes. I don't think it works on CM's scale though. In the final analysis, what you are advocating, Eden, wasn't how operations were conducted. In the fluid environment of small unit combat in WW II, in order to claim ownership of an objective, you had to have armed men on it or near enough to it to cover it with fire.

I think the key is in here; your other point(s) I understand completely; indeed I agree with them, yes I do. I think we all agree that while there may not have been a single soldier, nor even a bullet, perhaps, in Dumptruck, Idaho, still, that city was under the 'control' of the US at all times during the conflict.

So- scale is one thing which works in my favor when large, not so well when small. Agreed? Agreed.

But 'scale' as you use it refers only to area- what about timeframe? There's a scenario on the CD which lasts *six* minutes, for pete's sake.

I think your point about the 'fluid' nature of the war is guilty of considering a twenty-four hour timeframe more than a twenty four minute timeframe, no?

The battle, let's say, lasts twenty four minutes; this battle for 'the hill' is in it's twentieth minute, and 'we own' the hill. 'We own' it, in the common sense, John Wayne would understand it way meaning 'it's inside the closed polygon our troops are stepping on'.

Since we're in the business of shooting things and blowing them up, let's put it this way: We could, if we wanted, shoot that hill and blow it up and step on it and call it nasty names. The enemy does not have that option. In the official manly man's dictionary, that constitutes control. *For Now*. OK.

Now in the remaining four minutes (!) of this battle, what shall we do with Joe squad? The battle is happening now, the opportunities to inflict high cost on the enemy are now, (suppose).

Shall we send Joe squad to aid B company in eliminating those last pockets of infantry resistance, thus allowing the tank hunter teams safe access to those expensive tanks struggling to escape right now? Or should we send him up 'the hill' to look the place over and start setting up barbed wire and putting up a clothesline?

That sense of 'control' seems to me modelling the hour *after* the battle; the twenty four minutes in CM seem to me *THE* battle, not 'the battle and the hour afterwards'; there will be time enough for that later, if we care to stick around this hill.

If your claim is that the motion is *that* fluid, that I will lose control in the next four minutes if I don't entrench in minute twenty, then that is tantamount to saying I'm vulnerable to a threat which is imaginary, which I've made clear I discount.

Fluid, ok- but do you really mean that I don't control a VL which my front line has passed five minutes ago?? If I had to believe that about fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, I could. But not here- I just can't see it.

What say you to that, O wizard?

Eden

[Sarge Saunders]

Here is a quick test. None of these results make sense in light of our discussion. But here are the screenshots anyway.....

Why can't the FO control the VL??

This empty mortar can't defend a VL but he controls it??

This PSW has no MG and no main gun ammo but controls a flag??

A gun that has no ammo??

A Stug with no ammo and no MG can control a flag.

Seems very inconsistent behavior....

-Sarge

[Michael Emrys]

Well gee, Eden, what I think is that you are using the word 'control' in a different way than armies or BFC uses it. When a commander ordered his troops to secure an objective, he meant that they were to keep an eye on it until relieved. And what BFC is saying is that if you haven't secured the objective, you don't own it. It may be the case that nobody owns it, in which case nobody get points for it. By clearing the enemy units off of it, you have deprived them of the points for owning it. You have accomplished that much and the game rewards you accordingly. But if you move your force off the objective, you don't own it either.

As Maher Baba used to say, "Don't worry. Be happy."

Your concern about the time scale is warranted but I think you have interpreted it mistakenly. In order to claim the objective just by having it behind your lines, I think you would have had to have it, uncontested, for a period of time greatly exceeding the duration of a CM game. I base this on my interpretation of what I have read that was written by fighting men and their historians. Of course, there is no law that says you have to buy my interpretation, but if you disagree, I would be pleased to hear what you are basing it on that is in the historical record. I sort of get the feeling that you might be transposing something from other games onto CM (my apologies if this is not the case) and I don't think that is appropriate in this instance.

Michael

[Eden Smallwood]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Well gee, Eden, what I think is that you are using the word 'control' in a different way than armies or BFC uses it. When a commander ordered his troops to secure an objective, he meant that they were to keep an eye on it until relieved.

My claim is that I do indeed 'have an eye on it', that is quite emphaticallly my point exactly, I simply don't always choose to 'have a squad on it' during those twenty four minutes, but...

I would be pleased to hear what you are basing it on that is in the historical record

Except for the deuce of common sense, I'm out of trumps, and I don't wish to pursue the enemy. It was not appropriate for you to have called this a 'gripe'- I began by saying 'I disagree' and that's what I've done, but... case closed.

'Don't worry, be happy' is SOP #1, so... don't worry.

Eden

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Pak40:

Kingfish, you miss my point. The crew itself has the power to win the VL: All crews have weapons. The problem in the game is that the crew inside the vehicle is denied the ability to hold the VL but if they could simply could get out of the vehicle then they would be able to hold the VL. A minor flaw in the game but one that needs to be corrected IMO.

I recognize that this is an inconsistency, but I think that correcting it would lead to worse problems than the inconsistency. Assuming that the VL model was not changed, but crews had the ability to voluntarily disembark, this would lead to a new type of gamey flag rush - on the last turn of the game, the player orders the crew in the empty AC to disembark and hold the VL.

Not only is this gamey - it's highly unrealistic. While there certainly have been cases where dismounted crews were used as infantry - this happened in the bulge, for example - I have never heard of an example where the crew of a, say, disabled tank, drove to an objected and dismounted to hold it as infantry. Which is a big reason why they shouldn't have this ability in CMBB. As another poster pointed out, if you can't hold the objective without needing to abandon a vehicle and use its crew as infantry, you don't have enough men to hold the VL. Remember, in game terms, your *orders* are to *hold* VLs - if you can't spare one squad or combat worthy vehicle to do so, maybe you should rethink your battle plan.

It is true that the crew of an ammoless AFV has more FP than the afv - which is completely realistic. But I really don't think that BFC should make changes that would lead to gamey behavior like last minute vehicle abandonment.

VLs are, of course, an abstraction, but, at one level, you don't need to look beyond the abstraction to have realistic results - your orders are to hold the VL, and you don't need to know any more than that.

Historically, there are a couple of different scenarios that holding a VL *could* represent. In one case, you would win by holding a VL because the VL has LOS to some (abstracted) road or marshalling area which you can interdict. In this situation, you need to have firepower because the (hypothetical) column of retreating enemy trucks won't be interdicted by an ammoless afv. (Although an FO with ammo could probably do this quite well).

Another scenario would be the reverse - you want to deny the enemy control of a hill so that you can complete your retreat - in this situation, it would technically be enough to deny the enemy control of the hill - although, in real life, the commander is going to want some friendly troops on the hill to contest it should the enemy renew his attack.

There are other things that a VL could represent as well.

To sum up: it would lead to extremely ahistorical results for crews to spontaneously disembark to hold a location on foot. While this leads to the situation that an ammoless AFV can't control a VL, but could if it disembarked its men, this situation is *fine* because: (1) IRL, the men wouldn't have abandoned their vehicles; and (2) if your control of a VL is so tenuous that you need to abandon vehicles to hold it, you really shouldn't be considered to have control of it in the first place.

Actually, the real solution to the problem has just occurred to me: the unrealistic part of this is that ammoless vehicles continue to linger about the battlefield. These guys should really leave the map when they are out of ammo. This eliminates the crew inconsistency bit, and is also historically accurate - the official history of the bulge has all kinds of accounts of tank (or TD) platoons suddenly leaving for the rear to resuppply.

[peckham]

As long as the flag doesn't show up as neutral in the game itself, in terms of FOW, I agree wholeheartedly with BTS' interpretation of 'control' as it applies conceptually to the CM series.

If the flag showed up as neutral as soon as a sole-defending unit ran out of ammo, it would be an obvious "charge" signal to opposing forces. As far as I know, this doesn't happen. That flag only shows up as neutral (in this case) after the game ends, correct?

BTS is basically saying "ability to defend" = "legal control of an objective." IF you have no ability to defend, you have no ability to control. As long as you have so much as one round to defend, you still have temporal control of the objective.

The only problem I see here is that this can lead to gamey tactics, like having an AFV hold onto its last round of ammo just to hold the objective (betting on FOW to stave off an assault/advance) and win the objective, which would obviously NOT happen in the real thing. In this case, as someone else noted earlier, that last round really doesn't differ much from no ammo at all. I suppose it's just the best compromise-on-realism point that BTS could come up with.

[Sarge Saunders]

Any comments on my screenshots above? They run contrary to much of what has been said.

Namely:

- FOs with ammo can defend a VL in real life but not control it in CMBB.

- Even ammoless tanks and armored cars are controlling VLs despite their being unable to defend it. This runs contrary to everything that has been said so far. Pak40s vehicle must have been a halftrack of somefink.

- Ammoless Mortar team controls an objective all alone? This makes no sense.

-Sarge

[Pak40]

Originally posted by Sarge Saunders:

Any comments on my screenshots above? They run contrary to much of what has been said.

Namely:

- FOs with ammo can defend a VL in real life but not control it in CMBB.

- Even ammoless tanks and armored cars are controlling VLs despite their being unable to defend it. This runs contrary to everything that has been said so far. Pak40s vehicle must have been a halftrack of somefink.

- Ammoless Mortar team controls an objective all alone? This makes no sense.

-Sarge

interesting screen shots. All I know is that the case that I saw was a Russian armored car, I forget the model but it was one of those real small cars with a two man crew and one machinegun. Im absolutly positive that there wasn't an enemy anywhere near the VL at any point during the battle.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by peckham:

If the flag showed up as neutral as soon as a sole-defending unit ran out of ammo, it would be an obvious "charge" signal to opposing forces. As far as I know, this doesn't happen. That flag only shows up as neutral (in this case) after the game ends, correct?

Not exactly. Take a hypothetical case. Say you have a squad on an objective. It fires off its last round. Now the flag for the player who owns the squad turns neutral. But on the screen of the opposing player (including the AI if that is the case), the flag is still showing ownership by the squad's side.

In other words, what you see on the screen is determined by best intelligence at that moment. I know my squad is busted, but you don't.

Similarly, I've had it happen several times using EFOW that a flag was neutral to begin the game, then as units of the opposing side popped into visibility, that side was credited with ownership on my screen. But if they ducked down and I lost contact with them, the flag on my screen reverted to neutral. On his screen, it showed his ownership in all three instances.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Sarge Saunders:

Any comments on my screenshots above? They run contrary to much of what has been said.

True. And they also put a stretch on common sense.

The fact that some players observe the exact opposite of what you posted implies that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Michael

[Sarge Saunders]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sarge Saunders:

Any comments on my screenshots above? They run contrary to much of what has been said.

True. And they also put a stretch on common sense.

The fact that some players observe the exact opposite of what you posted implies that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Michael</font>

[Pak40]

OK. I ran a little test scenario myself. The Armored Car in question is the Russian BA64. I had the AC target the ground until his ammo was depleted, then I moved the car over to the VL which remained neutral even after the end of the turn. The nearest enemy was 200-300 meters away.

Next time I will run the test with other armored cars to see if they have the same problem.

[Pak40]

bump