Identify eliminated units - why not?

[Schoerner]

I don't know if this was already discussed, but wouldn't it be logical, that eliminated units are identified, when own troops pass by?

I guess even the highest level of identification should be possible.

[YankeeDog]

It is, at least in some situations. I just Fully IDed a KOed 45mm ATG that had previously been IDed only as a KOed "light gun?" by driving my tank up right next to it.

You may be right, though, that you can't fully ID a "soft" unit that has been eliminated (like a squad or crew). I haven't yet fully IDed an eliminated 'soft' unit that was previously only partially spotted.

[White Phosphorus]

I don't think that an "eliminated soft unit" even looks human. Plus I don't think that the troops would want to stare at it.

[Schoerner]

Not staring at it, but as i know it was necessary for further recon and the rank-signs and medals of fallen soldiers also were very important indicators.

[ November 19, 2002, 08:52 PM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[Nolloff]

Edited and blanked out to make my posting match content.

Nolloff

[ November 20, 2002, 03:06 AM: Message edited by: Nolloff ]

[Holien]

This is a new feature and I think quite good. In the CMBO you used to get full info on the unit and fairly quickly.

Now it takes ages if ever to get info on what you have killed. I am in a game at the moment where I occupy a library and there are heaps of dead German units. Some have been Id'd most have not.

I have sent my men around in loops in the building to see if they will Id them, to no avail.

I think it is neat and can be explained as the fog of war.

H

[Schoerner]

If a squad walks on by of an eliminated unit, why should there be fog of war?

In reality it would be identified and so it should be in CM.

[Holien]

Well I think of it like this.

Your men would have to spend time looking at the dead unit. There might not be a lot of it left.

The gun unit might be a heap of twisted metal. Tanks seem easier to ID and this would be the case IRL.

The information might take some time to be passed back to the HQ unit.

The bodies of the dead unit will be spread about and need finding. Especially in a large building they could be all over the place.

If I was commanding in that situation I would rather my men be posted looking for the living enemy than searching the dead.

I think there might be a random chance of discovering what the unit is. That is good IMO.

I have yet to complete any of the games I have started in CMBB (as I am only playing PBEM and refuse to play by myself when there are so many opponents out there) and so far this feature really helps with the immersion and reality of the situation we are playing with.

H

[Schoerner]

Holien, it is the duty to identify an eliminated enemy if it wasn't identified already.

A short look of an officer on the uniform of the fallen enemy when walking by and the unit should be identified.

For highest level of identification (experience) a closer look could be necessary and therefore your explanation for not showing the highest identification-level sounds quite logical.

[ November 21, 2002, 07:20 AM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[xerxes]

In the heat of battle you're going to go around counting bodies, putting back together body parts and counting weapons to find out exactly how many platoons were in that church? I think not.

If you don't like EFOW, turn it off.

[Schoerner]

Counting bodies and identifying infantry due to uniforms are different things.

I like EFOW. Why should i turn it off?

I only want a higher chance of identification of eliminated units if friendly units are very close and walking over an eliminated squad or HQ.

[Holien]

Hi,

Perhaps I am not understanding what you want?

In my current situation I know that infantry units have died in the building. I do not know the make up of all those units.

I know that just outside the building are two possible mortar teams, but no more than that.

I know that upstairs a HMG unit has met its end.

I have ID'd one unit as a platoon HQ, and another as a recon squad. However the other units have not been ID.

So I presume there is some random chance of ID'ing a unit and I have been un lucky.

This to my mind works and can be explained by falling rubble, off limit rooms where I can not get in due to rubble etc...

I have been given enough information to know that they were infantry and that is enough?

Could you explain further what sort of exact info you want so I can understand?

H

[Schoerner]

Say you play the Iwan and eliminate a german squad, while the rest of the platoon draws back.

Your troops reach the place where the german squad was eliminated, but it is still displayed as "Infantry?" only.

You are not able to make conclusions about the type of infantry and therefore about the firepower that is left (MPs, lMGs, probability of support weapons, that are still waiting for your men).

Is it Heer? Is it Gebirgsjäger with extreme short-range firepower or maybe Elite-SS?

In reality you would already know it - and you would be very keen to know it, wouldn't you?

[ November 21, 2002, 10:49 AM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by xerxes:

In the heat of battle you're going to go around counting bodies, putting back together body parts and counting weapons to find out exactly how many platoons were in that church? I think not.

The way I was trained, you wouldn't just count the bodies, you would make sure that they were dead, then search them, working in pairs and being very careful to check for booby-traps.

I doubt that it's only the British army that does it this way.

All the best,

John.

[Holien]

Ok,

Now in that situation think the game gives you a random chance to ID the unit. If you do not then it can be explained away by the following.

1st, a destroyed unit is not all dead men, so some might have escaped / run away, aka cowards or sensible men depending on your view. Therefore no bodies with those few men.

2nd, Men are taken from a unit when wounded. These can range from any sort of wounds. These men might be removed or dragged away from the combat area during the course of the fight.

3rd, The element of men left (dead) (Remember at the end of a game the KIA numbers are really very small to the total casulaity figure.) is small and these might not have unit ID. During war weapons and uniforms got swapped. People hit with bullets tend to bleed a lot and unit id's become un-readable. Weapons can not be relied on to ID a unit.

4th That small element of dead will be scattered over an area and in hidy holes, depressions in the ground. When you come under fire you try and find somewhere that you can get out of it, so not all dead will be in obvious places.

So all in all in some situations you might only know that it was an infantry unit. You might have a few dead ripped apart by grenades and MG fire and any chance of ID'ing the unit is slim.

The fact that I have ID'd some units seem to indicate a random chance and that is good IMO.

This is like the Death Clock where your units will not know everything straight away.

I love it, but am happy to understand why people might want it different.

H

[Holien]

Hi John,

I think the difference here is that you would certainly do as you describe once a lull was found in the combat, but until then you might not be paying that much attention to the dead, apart from shooting them again to make sure that they are dead.

I think an abstraction has been made on what to reveal and this has (or seems) to be random and the discussion is to what should be known and when about the dead units you are near.

Also what an officer might be looking for and what a soldier will be looking for are two different things. Knowing human nature it could well be that the regular grunt only knows that it is a dead human. They are little interested in what unit, until asked by a more senior officer.

However, as I have little experience of a real battlefield I do not know what soldiers are trained to do now, and more to the point then.

H

[ November 21, 2002, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: Holien ]

[Schoerner]

John, I guess he ment a situation, where there's absolutely no time and full action around.

What the absolute minimum i learnt is, to identify by uniform, if it's not possible to count, or if it's a bit difficult (i.e. direct-hit by arty).

[ November 21, 2002, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: Schoerner ]

[Holien]

Hmmm just thinking about this more.

Would a grunt recognise the different uniform types.

Yep I know the SS stand out, but would you know what type of SS unit?

Would the Average Russian / German soldier who has little education have any interest in all the different styles of uniforms.

Remember the war time armies did not go through all the training peace time armies get. I think there were special Intelligence units that shifted the battlefield after the action looking for clues on what / who was fought.

As CM models the action this is perhaps out of the remit of the current model and would add weight to the current modelling IMO.

H

[Mud]

Hmmm. Don't we still get too much information, even in EFOW? For instance, if three squads are in woods, they'll generate three distinct infantry contacts regardless of how depleted they are (e.g. ideally, wouldn't there be a chance of three nearby depleted squads looking like two or even one?).

...and how would you know whether a given squad had been entirely eliminated, anyway? I could see it for a crewed weapon (if you're staring at the gun's wreckage, it's toast) but couldn't there be another member who left the area?

[NewSocialistMan]

You know? If I were in the heat of battle with bullets and shells flying everywhere and the guy next to me wondered aloud "I wonder what unit he's with", I'd smack him on the back of the KACKA and tell him to get back to the task at hand. Why do you care? He's just another dead fascisti.

Save the prisoner interrogation for the commissars.

[ November 21, 2002, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: NewSocialistMan ]

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by NewSocialistMan:

You know? If I were in the heat of battle with bullets and shells flying everywhere and the guy next to me wondered aloud "I wonder what unit he's with", I'd smack him on the back of the KACKA and tell him to get back to the task at hand. Why do you care? He's just another dead fascisti.

Surely, but this depends on the army.

In the Wehrmacht, where too few men and material always had been a problem, the Unteroffizier was very well trained, educated and cared as much as possible for his men - much more than in most other armies (the well educated Unteroffizierskorps was THE backbone of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS).

"Auftragstaktik" (the command described only the target and the Offizier decided freely on his own, how he could achieve it) made this necessary, too.

Although i don't know what was part of the exams, i'm sure every german inf. platoon-leader was capable to identify russian inf. by uniform completely and NCOs at least the most common in the region.

[Holien]

Schoerner fair points and an update on the game where I have men in the same building as lots of dead German units.

This turn I ID some more of the units and got a bit more info.

I think the model is working on a random chance of giving out basic info and I would think it would be worth checking in your own games.

This was a new feature to me and it really is icing on a bloody good cake which makes the game more enjoyable IMO.

H

[Earl]

Take a look a the D-Day photos of Allied troops and then the same units about a month later. I dare you to find I external unit designation on the US troops that isn't encrypted in some way. The Germans were gaining way too much useful intelligence from the shoulder patches. Not conversant on what late war Germans were doing but I would expect something similar.

I think even a fairly green troop would know branch of service info, the difference in uniforms between SS and old men and boys in the Volks units and everyone else. Quality/unit designation would be take longer to determine (and would almost always be estimated higher than actual - something about bullets in your personal space). Searching the bodys happens as soon as the shooting stops IIRC. USMC is teams of two with overwatch carefully checking for booby traps as they go. Sounds very similar to the UK description above.

[NewSocialistMan]

I would think it would be more difficult to do with troops from the Motherland because of the wholesale borrowing of troops from one unit to another that happened. Not to mention the general austerity that resulted in very nondescript uniforms.

If I were a fascist at Stalingrad or Kursk and tried to make heads or tails of the Russian troops based on uniforms, I'd be pretty confused all the way around. In this respect, the game makes things a bit too clean.

[Mud]

Wouldn't the same problem also hold the other way around, late in the war? Perhaps the Volksturm and scratch units all had spiffy uniforms and clear unit insignia, but that seems unlikely to me. *shrug*