MOUT and Urban Warfare is unplayable

[Wiggum]

MOUT and Urban Warfare at all(Trench fighting) is nearly unplayable. You can win but look at the casulties and you see that it dident work...

- The Soldiers die to fast. When they are "Green" they will die so fast you cant count it. They need better cover !!

- Small Arms accuracy is to hight !

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=003438

- Door to Door fighting and close combat dont work they die thats all. In CMx1 you hera the beating and see how handgranates get less but in CMSF it is just "last man standing"

1.05 was a improvement but not the big deal.

My englisch is not good so i cant write a roman.

But i hope someone has the same oppinion like me.

Gruß Wiggum

[ January 04, 2008, 03:52 PM: Message edited by: Wiggum ]

[flamingknives]

Is it that the lethality is too high, or are you missing something (like suppressive fire) that would reduce the lethality?

[molotov_billy]

Give the campaign that was just released a try. It deals with mostly infantry combat in non-MOUT settings - the engine seems to deal with that type of combat much much better than the typical scenario included with the game.

The longer ranges reduce lethality a fair amount, and maneuver becomes far more worthwhile. Lots of tactical thinking involved.

[the Fighting Seabee]

Have you heard of WW1 or the Battle of Fallujah? Trench warfare and urban warfare are the most deadly and difficult ways to fight. There are no special tactics you can use to win perfectly. These types of warfare a hard, slow, and bloody slogs. The main reason our great Marines did so well in Fallujah, was because they were able to call in air strikes and artillery. Whenever they came to a hard nut to crack, they pulled back and destroyed the whole nut. Then they moved in and mopped up. (I'm in no way saying they had it easy or aren't the best, just that they were able to use far superior firepower to great effect). Had the Marines not had these other options, it would have taken much longer and cost a lot more American blood.

So when you get stuck in the trenches or can't seem to cross the street, it's because that is how it works in real life, and that's what creates interesting tactical situations.

[SgtMuhammed]

That is one of the reasons that for years the official Army position on MOUT was to avoid it.

[Battlefront.com]

Correct. MOUT warfare is tough to do. If you rush it, you will get slaughtered. We've made some tweaks to various small arms elements, however based on your comments Wiggum I suspect tactics are more at fault in your case. Please do not take that personally since it is a very difficult thing to do and most people do it wrong (at least some of the time). As SgtMuhammed said... even the professional soldiers like to stay way from MOUT warfare because it is difficult to do. There is a reason for that, and the guys going from Green to Red is a big part of that

Steve

[Wiggum]

@ the Fighting Seabee

@ Battlefront

Im know that Urban Warfare is hard and bloody, i did Urban Warfare Training in the Bundeswehr and my grandpa told me lots of storys from Caen.

But what i try to say is:

I understand that my soldiers die when i use bad tactics. But in CMSF my guys die when i think they are in good cover !

They are in a house...a few shots...and i have 2 red and one yellow.

I move my Soldiers carfully from corner to corner, try to use supressiv fire and smoke (what dident work good because the smoke is everywere but not where you want it) but ...shooting... and the squad is nearly dead.

I love this game, in the open terrain it plays great. But in the Urban area i think it needs much tweaking.

The fighting in a building feels "not real" for me...

It looks like it is only one room...a cowboy style shooting and the winner is...?

Someone post here a Video from the clearing of a house and that wasent a 5 sec fight.

[Thomm]

Wiggum,

I agree with you!

On reason may be, that self-preservation is currently not very high on the list of objectives for the virtual soldiers. Maybe we are thinking about the same video, where soldiers try to enter a building from the roof and haul a$$ after the first shots are fired.

Now, try that in CM:SF!!

However, I am confident that the engine will be tweaked to suit your expectations better in the long run.

Best regards,

Thomm

[JohnO]

What I would like to see for this type of a situation is that the soldiers who has them to be able to toss smoke grenades to cover their movements.

As for the fighting in a building that looks like only one room, allot of it deals with abstraction of that room.

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

On reason may be, that self-preservation is currently not very high on the list of objectives for the virtual soldiers. Maybe we are thinking about the same video, where soldiers try to enter a building from the roof and haul a$$ after the first shots are fired.

Now, try that in CM:SF!!

That's true, but I think it's a pacing issue as well. Such modeling of infantry combat would be hard to convert to a video game - we'd need 8 hour time limits and a far heavier reliance on artillery and air assets. In most scenarios, we don't have the option to withdraw and just call in an airstrike, or wait an hour and a half for a Bradley to reduce an entire structure to pieces.

I do feel that the 30 minute stuff is ridiculously short and in no way a function of reality, but the full realism side of it would be the complete opposite of the spectrum. It has to be playable at some point.

[Oddball_E8]

something i miss when playing this game is what the 'good old' swedish combat manuals say about house-to-house fighting... namely that you should enter buildings through unconventional means (ie. breaching either walls or roofs) and that you should always toss a grenade into the room before clearing it (in combat conditions of course... not when civvies are around)

now... in the game this is somewhat represented by the fact that you can breach walls with engineers... but they have far too few breaching charges and they do far too much damage for the tactics ive been taught (albeit somewhat outdated tactics)... they should just breach a smaller hole the size of a door to enter... not blow the whole fasade of the side theire on...

and as for 'nading the room before entering... that just never ever ever happens in the game...

wich is too bad... instead my troops just run into the house and nicely find their spots before returning fire on the enemy squad thats in the house firing at them (of course, you wont notice that until half your squad is in the house and dead anyway)

[Wiggum]

@ Rollstoy

And i agree with you...

Maybe that can be simulated by turning down the lethality of small arms fire.

@ JohnO

I know that the fighting in a house is abstracted, but i goes to fast for me.

And i dont know how it works...in CMx1 i know that.

@ molotov_billy

Yes thats true...

But when i bought CMSF i want that real feeling, whatever the cost.

(I hope you know how i mean that )

[ January 04, 2008, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Wiggum ]

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Wiggum:

@ molotov_billy

Yes thats true...

But when i bought CMSF i want that real feeling, whatever the cost.

Wiggum - I think part of the issue is that they need to make the game playable for PBEM users. A 6 hour scenario becomes quite a beast if you play one minute at a time! Even the 2 hour stuff that you occasionaly see now - 120 turns? Have people been able to complete those?

Personally, I don't play by email. It would be interesting to see longer scenarios and a feature that let's me speed up playback - like a flight simlator. 4x, 8x, etc - for when you're waiting on those airstrikes or whatever else.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Wiggum]

@ Adam1

If you mean me:

I took that conclusions from many scenarios (all with 1.05).. but what made me start this thread was the Scenario "Assault on Precinct Thirteen" from MikeyD which is on cmmods.

(Play on Real Time ; Elite ; Red)

[Battlefront.com]

molotov_billy,

It would be interesting to see longer scenarios and a feature that let's me speed up playback - like a flight simlator. 4x, 8x, etc - for when you're waiting on those airstrikes or whatever else.

I'd love that too. We had a good discussion about this fairly recently. The upshot is that in theory it is possible to do, however there are practical hardware issues that preclude it being viable at the moment. Namely, the hardware is already stretched pretty hard to simulate everything in 1x speed, so speeding things up will undoubtedly (at this point) cause problems. Vehicle sims have a lot more latitude for doing this than we do, unfortunately, so they have a better chance of pulling it off without odd game results. Though someone in the previous discussion pointed to a well known flight sim (forget which one) that had problems with compressing time without negative consequences.

Steve

[civdiv]

Originally posted by Wiggum:

MOUT and Urban Warfare at all(Trench fighting) is nearly unplayable. You can win but look at the casulties and you see that it dident work...

- The Soldiers die to fast. When they are "Green" they will die so fast you cant count it. They need better cover !!

- Small Arms accuracy is to hight !

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=003438

- Door to Door fighting and close combat dont work they die thats all. In CMx1 you hera the beating and see how handgranates get less but in CMSF it is just "last man standing"

1.05 was a improvement but not the big deal.

My englisch is not good so i cant write a roman.

But i hope someone has the same oppinion like me.

Gruß Wiggum

I am like 20 turns into an urban battle against the AI (My first try at the game) and I cannot disagree with you more. I have an approximatly 10-1 kill ratio at normal level (whatever the middle difficulty is). Use real tactics! Find the enemy, back-up as appropriate, hammer the location with .50 cal and Mk-19s from the Strykers, or with Javelins, and then move back in and take the given building down.

I had one face-to-face standoff with about 12 enemy left on the second floor of a building and I sent a squad into clear the building before I had spotted the enemy. I quickly lost two guys from the squad, backed up the squad into the street, occupied the adjacent buildings with more troops, hammered the second floor with just .50 cal area fire, nailed about half the enemy remaining mostly from the adjacent infantry in surrounding and attached buildings, and then rolled in with a fresh squad and killed the remaining 5 or 6 guys in the building in Close Quarters Battle.

If you get some fire on them they pin and cower just as if they are an MG-42 in CMx1 in an improved position, and then you roll in at close range and kill them.

I'd like to see the option of throwing in a demo charge from the doorway on the street to level the building, but is that not an option?

Find them, fix them with fire from multiple angles, inflict some casulaties, and then mop them up. Use the buildings to leapfrog through the urban areas, stop and hammer the enemy when you face opposition, rinse, repeat. Use overwatch where you push a unit forward covered with additional squads and MG teams. The moving unit may take a few casualties when crossing a street in preparation of assaulting the next building, but when they take fire numerous units in overwatch will open up and quickly suppress the firers.

[thelmia]

I still follow the same formula as I did in WW2. Use infantry to find the enemy, then blow the snot out of them with direct fire and artillery. High explosive is still the best way to clear buildings, and there are a lot of ways to deliver it. Tanks, APCs, ATGMs, and so on. Small arms shootouts are for the birds. It's way too fair

I use infantry teams to spot, then it's time to call in their friends.

The Syrian tanks are wonderful at infantry support. The big 125mm guns have plenty of HE ammo.

[General_solomon]

the only way MOUT is playable for me is with the following settings:

basic training

conscript (both sides)

fanatic(so this counters the conscript option)(both sides)

poor weapons (both sides)

after hours of testing and reading the manual, the settings above decreased the lethality of the game.

[Bigduke6]

I have my issues with the game as a whole, but frankly I think combat in built up areas isn't really a big problem, in general things work fine.

I base this conclusion on one of the later battles in the campaign, where you get an ungodly amount of air and artillery support, plus a ton of vehicles, and the mission basically is to clear a town.

The map was incredibly open (more on that below) so it was not brain surgery to set up an overwatch, call in strikes on every possible enemy hiding place, and then move in behind the strikes. Just like in real life when the US has free fire release against a hapless 5th rate opponent, the real danger to my troopies was friendly fire.

I was careful about friendly fire. Elite setting, total victory, 1 US KIA and 3 wounded. Dirtbag Syrian defenders ground into a pile of hummus.

For me, that bit of fighting in an built-up area was ridiculously easy. Blast everything beforehand, and then if it moves, blast again. Repeat until no movement.

Now, if the scenario had given the US player limited air/artillery support, or the Syrians plenty of infantry or better infantry or more automatic weapons or some mines or some missiles or lots of RPGs, things would have been alot more difficult.

And of course, if the scenario village had been a proper village with narrow streets, telephone wires, road dividers, jumbled buildings and hundreds of them, orchards, irrigation ditches, and all the other LOS blockers you get when people live in a place for a couple of thousand years, then of course things would have been alot more difficult for me.

But as it was it was like driving up to some ranch buildings in the Montana prarie, with plenty of overwatch positions and the bad guys have no place to hide but the buildings, and you can level every building about five times over. In other words cakewalk, as long as you aren't shy about using your firepower.

My two cents' on lethality is that it seems like weapons are performing as advertised rather than as per real life experience. History is full of examples where huge amounts of firepower are brought down on men in defense, and the men aren't really hurt, which amazes the attackers. The game doesn't seem to replicate a human's ability to make himself small and get out of the way of fire.

I'm sure Steve and the boys will torque the lethality down in a bit.

But also I think that part of the lethality of the game is due to scenarios stacked towards the US side - i.e., very open and the Syrians are pretty hapless. That's not a problem of the game engine.

I am aware scenario-design in CMSF is a finicky process and making a properly-balanced scenario on a properly-complicated map is a huge amount of work. But when we criticize lethality, we need to bear in mind that alot of it has to do with the tactical conditions created by the scenario, it's not just the percent to hit numbers used by the engine.

[Wiggum]

The game doesn't seem to replicate a human's ability to make himself small and get out of the way of fire.

Thats it !

That is what i mean...

@ civdiv

You can not use "real tactics" because you must adapt your tactics to the Gameplay of CMSF.

If you play US, it is easy to destroy everything...you have great Air and Artillerie power, you can use javalins and get ammo from the Strykers.

But play Red vs. Red or US Infantery only (no Support) and all is different.

-----------------------------------------------

I think you should have the option to split every Squad and get a Attack and Anti-Tank troop. So your Syrian Guys must not go all on a roof to fire a RPG on a Stryker and get killed.

I think houses and trenches must give much better cover against small arms fire.

And i think spotting goes to fast. you know really fast where the fire comes from, that makes snipers useless.

[ January 05, 2008, 02:29 AM: Message edited by: Wiggum ]

[Secondbrooks]

Yeah. I guess that during most battles when things are getting hot commanding officer puts brakes on, maybe even canceling what his unit is doing and fallback or seeking relative safe positions for his unit and starts to wait for something, like backup. Supplying at the same time. If backup ain't available he won't advance, unless he's forced by superiours or situation to do that. Usually gamer ain't like that, he's has been given mission, while canceling it isn't option to him, untill most his men bites the dust.

Assault which is starting to seem more like massmurder than shiny victory isn't canceled. Same applies to AI. In reality even scent of massmurder is enough to justificate them to cease (or temporary halt) mission which has been given to them, (usually) officers are not willing to get their men killed... Atleast so it seems. Forexample: Artybarrage went wrong, and companycommander desided at it wasn't worth it to even try to advance over open swamp. How this would go in game? Player may curse a bit and after that he orders his pixel men to cross the swamp. Atleast my bride usually ain't enough flexible to quit scnerio before most of men are dead.

Not saying that game engine is 100% healthy. But this is one basic difference with game and reality i would think. Atleast when i was in army and during one exercise we managed to ambush enemy company's pointmen. Immediatly after that the whole company pulled back and changed it's course, those pesky cowards were avoiding contact with us and headed for our flank! What would player do in that situation? "Troops: Bayonets attach! Ready - Chargeeeee!!!" ... Or something like that.

[ January 05, 2008, 02:49 AM: Message edited by: Secondbrooks ]

[SlowMotion]

Originally posted by Oddball_E8:

you should enter buildings through unconventional means (ie. breaching either walls or roofs) and that you should always toss a grenade into the room before clearing it

....

and as for 'nading the room before entering... that just never ever ever happens in the game...

wich is too bad... instead my troops just run into the house and nicely find their spots before returning fire on the enemy squad thats in the house firing at them (of course, you wont notice that until half your squad is in the house and dead anyway)

What makes this stranger is that grenades seem to cause no damage to friendly units. So units inside a building may throw grenades towards assaulting troops that are very close (within 5 meters) and in the same room. Assaulting enemy may die, but own troops don't get a scratch.

I tested this by ordering area fire as close to own squad as possible. Several grenades exploded maybe 2 meters from the closest soldier. Nobody from the squad was wounded.

[Wiggum]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I'm sure Steve and the boys will torque the lethality down in a bit.

What does Battlefront say to the lethality and cover problem ?

[civdiv]

Originally posted by Wiggum:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The game doesn't seem to replicate a human's ability to make himself small and get out of the way of fire.

Thats it !

That is what i mean...

@ civdiv

You can not use "real tactics" because you must adapt your tactics to the Gameplay of CMSF.

If you play US, it is easy to destroy everything...you have great Air and Artillerie power, you can use javalins and get ammo from the Strykers.

But play Red vs. Red or US Infantery only (no Support) and all is different.

</font>