Blue forces casualties

[Scipio]

The weak spot of the blue/US forces are surely casualties. IIRC, that's even written somewhere in the manual!?

Since resupply and lost equipment is not really a problem for the USA, even for most expensive stuff (how I have learned in another thread ), I'm speaking of course about personnel casualties or in other words: dead and most heavily wounded electronic soldiers.

My first question is: are personnel casualties handeled differently as destroyed 'hardware' in regards of the victory conditions?

Second question: if I would like to balance a scenario, it seems to make sense to (nearly) always set a parameter threshold for the blue forces, so they have lost the battle if their casualties are getting to high, disregarding the other achieved objectives. If so, what threshold would makes sense? I would think that, depending on the mission, 10-15% are already enough. Are there any numbers that can be compared with modern real world conflicts?

[Webwing]

Second question:

I wouldn't say always makes sense. Making a mission that reflects perfectly what happens in RL doesn't mean it is going to be any fun in a game context. Sometimes it is though.

If you intend to simulate what happens in real life then I'd say no more than 10/15% casualties. Although in some cases even that would be too much.

To have low casualties for Blue you need to rely on artillery, air support an heavy tanks. Some would say that this unbalances the mission!

It all comes down to what you want to depict in your scenario IMO.

-

[ChrisND]

In my campaign, the player must keep his casualties below 10% or the red player gets 600 bonus points, and when the point total is 1000 for every scenario, that can be a big deal. However, since armored vehicles are a rarity, the player has to keep casualties low the old fashioned way: good tactics.

[tacticalviewer]

hey i'm want to know when a solider that mark with red circle is causilty and when he is dead..

[Field Marshal Blücher]

tacticalviewer, for game purposes dead and wounded are both casualties. However, I agree that it would be nice to know when someone's KIA or WIA.

-FMB

[Cpl Steiner]

If you use "unit" objectives you can allocate a certain point gain for the enemy if a particular unit or group of units is lost. This makes it possible to do lots of interesting things.

Example 1: Make Veteran or Elite squad casualties worse than Green or Regular ones.

Example 2: Make loss of vital units like M1 tanks extremely costly.

Example 3: Pick a unit that has only one man, such as a US Bradley Platoon Leader, and make his loss worth some massive amount of points to the enemy like in "Saving Private Ryan".

With vehicles, it's not clear what the ratio of points is between the vehicle and the crew. It would be nice if BFC made this clear, or better still, allowed the scenario designer to set it.

[C'Rogers]

It depends on whether you are setting up to play vs. the AI or vs. humans. Against the AI with a realistic setup 10% casualties are certainly doable. A human player will play a bit more intelligently and it would be very hard to maintain that amount.

The first scenario of the campaign I see as a good example of a realistic battle. Syrians stuck in a static position, US with a heavy firepower, getting through with no one killed is pretty easy. There a loss of a single tank or US squad should really reduce you to a minor victory if not a loss.

Personally I enjoy scenarios that are a bit more on the fringe. The battles that might only happen a few times in the war. The time US troops were slightly out of heavy artillery support for half an hour, the time military intelligence screwed up and missed how heavily fortified an area was, or the time that they had to take an unusual risk and rush forward for close combat. That's is how I balance a scenario but with variable victory conditions you can really do it any way you want.

[Cpl Steiner]

I suppose a simple summary would be "how would HQ feel about your performance in the battle". With masses of artillery support, your HQ would expect you to get the job done with minimal casualties. Anything else should lose you the game as you have not made best use of the resources available to you.

If you don't have so much support, then obviously HQ are going to overlook a few extra casualties as long as you get the job done.

It's not so much about winning the battle - the US has virtually never lost a battle in the last 40 years, including Vietnam. It has more to do with expectation vs. result.

[jomni]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

The US has virtually never lost a battle in the last 40 years, including Vietnam.

Huh????

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by jomni:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

The US has virtually never lost a battle in the last 40 years, including Vietnam.

Huh???? </font>

[nijis]

This may not the place to debate this, but anyway, here goes...

If you think otherwise, cite one example from 1965 onwards in which a US unit has surrendered to the enemy, been destroyed, or has otherwise failed to achieve its objectives.

This would depend on how small you want to go with "unit," or how broad you would go with "failed to achieve its objectives."

According to the book, The Cat from Hue, the mortar platoon of Charlie company, 1/12, 1st Cavalry Division, was overwhelmed by an NVA attack on May 20, 1966. The book's description is largely based on the article, "Men facing death: The destruction of an American platoon" by SLA Marshall in Harper's Magazine (pay to download, I think).

http://www.harpers.org/archive/1966/09/0015190

On a broader level, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, arguably failed to create a motivated and professional South Vietnamese military that could stand without a major US troop presence. (I don't know whether this was its official objective, but I would say that it was an implied one).

[ June 10, 2008, 03:06 AM: Message edited by: nijis ]

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by nijis:

This would depend on how small you want to go with "unit," or how broad you would go with "failed to achieve its objectives."

Remember, I said "never lost a battle". The unit you cite may have been all but destroyed during the battle of Hue, but as we all know, the US won the battle, albeit after a hard fight.

If the US had been defeated in any engagement you could reasonably call a "battle" since 1965, I think we would all know about it and wouldn't need to hunt for references.

Oh, and before anyone say's "Bay of Pigs", that doesn't count as it was anti-Castro Cuban exiles funded by America, not America itself.

[Secondbrooks]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

In purely military terms, I maintain that the US has never lost a battle from 1965 to the present day. For all I know it could be even further back than that.

This is purely Wikipedia, but:

Forexample:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_A_Shau

Ofcourse it naturally was because of ARVN

Here is list of battles in vietnam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_and_operations_of_the_Vietnam_War

I did check just few battles. There were few defeats and few useless victories. Do we count operations as well?

EDIT: Yeah. Pure US defeats as well. Or are US Marines counted to be US if Marines lost a battle?

[ June 10, 2008, 04:17 AM: Message edited by: Secondbrooks ]

[Cpl Steiner]

Secondbrooks,

Some interesting links there. I checked out the list of battles and noticed one that I'd heard of when I did my American Studies course years ago.

Battle of Pleiku

I remember how the defeat of the US forces here was one of the things that president Johnson used as an argument for an escalation of US involvement in Vietnam.

OK, I concede the point. On some rare occasions since the 1960s, US forces have been wiped out, overrun, or otherwise forced to withdraw in engagements that technically qualify as battles. The Pleiku example above is significant, as it was cited as a defeat by the President of the United States himself in order to get Congressional approval for more troops in Vietnam.

Although I'm happy to concede the point, I think the gist of what I was getting at is still valid. The US does not "fight fair". Rather, it uses massive amounts of firepower to ensure victory wherever possible.

In a future war with Syria, it is inconceivable to me that the Syrians would achieve any notable battlefield victories. Sure, they might give the Americans a bloody nose once in a while, but that's about it. Realistic and balanced CM:SF scenarios should therefore concentrate on the "bloody nose" battles, in which the US "almost" got beat, but they shouldn't postulate unrealistic situations such as Syrian armoured formations somehow evading US air cover to roll over US positions.

[Lethaface]

What is a 'notable battlefield victory'?

Different enemy's require different strategies and, hence, different tactics.

[Secondbrooks]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

Although I'm happy to concede the point, I think the gist of what I was getting at is still valid. The US does not "fight fair". Rather, it uses massive amounts of firepower to ensure victory wherever possible.

Agreed. Altough i see this as universal trend.

When looking at battles fought in ww2 as well it seems that when my contry's generals and colonels wrote down that they secured their objectives and prevailed (complitelly or partially) opponent did write down the same. There is pretty much always bright side on even something which basically was a faílure: Forexample counterattack was able to grant one extra day for reserves to arrive and regroup (main goal was to repel enemy attack)... I don't think that my contry's militaryhistory from ww2 inholds many failed battles or such, basically just one at -41 (blame on Germans natrually!) two broken defencelines during june of 1944 and maybe something small from between 41-44.

And Soviet then again seems to have pretty much same point of view, they won many battles (if not most at their point of view). Same during German offence to east during -41. To me it was eye opener to read certain Marshall's (from Soviet Union) writings from times of which i've had just "Western" point of views (which are prone to take German point-of-view). Year -41 was showed to me in whole different light.

Also word 'destoryed' was too easily used when AARs talked about fights with enemy. Most of sentences saying "Our unit destoryed enemy force" should be "Our unit repelled enemy force". Same applies to opponents AARs which i've read.

How many battles North Vietnamese thinks they have actaully lost? I think it's not even nearly as much as "Westerns" (taking US point-of-view) would think.