Moral, Ammo, and the Fearless Bazooka...

[Peter Cairns]

With the seperation of suppression and moral, will ammo become a factor for unit behaviour. for example.

In a 30 minute assault I try to dislodge defenders with cincentrated firepower before crossing open grown. After 10 minutes they are pinned or broken and I can move forward.

Problem is that with two thirds of the scenario left I have only a third of my ammo, having used two thirds already.

Will troops in that situation even if unshaken or suppressed be reluctant to move or even more cautious when ordered forward. I know that low ammo effects how you target and firepower, but what about advancing.

This brings me on to the fearless Bazooka.

US Airborne are fighting armour and have either lost or used all their Antitank rounds. In order to stop a PzIV, you order your last team ( perhaps down to one man) with your last round forward to stop it.

I feel that a flaw in CM is that the guy always does it even though it's pretty close to suicide.

Equally a lot of people seem to post AT teams on their own hidden up front to ambush armour. This is quite effective but the casualty rate for the AT teams is often 90% plus.

Would it not be more realistic if they at least from time to time, just stayed hidden and refuse to engage even when ordered too.

In the CMBB Demo the russian AT teams and most of the AT rifles seem to get sacrificed for little use. True this might be bad deployment, but I can't help thinking that the two comrades in cover watching the half dozen PzIII's go by would just stay if cover and let them past.

I suppose what I am asking is for some way for units to assess the risk and ignore orders if the risk is too high.

Peter.

Peter.

[Soddball]

Moral?

Or Morale?

[Peter Cairns]

Well i've learned my lesson, so I guess there's a morale in there somewhere.

Peter.

[Soddball]

[roqf77]

yes i agree. i believe on close combat there was such an effect. i ordered a team to attack a tank column but it refused until the last tank passed.

[J Ruddy]

I agree that the TACT AI could be a bit smarter when engaging armour with an AT team. But I also think that we still want to leave some of the decisions up to the player.

So For Bazooka / Piat / Panzerschreck / Karl G etc... I'd like to see:

- More intelligent targeting - if a tank is coming up the road, and you know you can not possibly take it out with a frontal hit, don't fire until you get a flank shot. This can be done in CMX1 to some extent by setting your cover arc to the area where you think you will get a side shot.

- Add a shoot and scoot order. This is how modern CF Karl G teams operate, because the massive back blast reveals your position and you can expect a pretty strong reaction if you miss. (Or if your target is supported by infantry). The sequene of actions would be: Hide, Cover Arc, Aquire Target, Fire, Run like Hell. (I know the Karl G is hardly modern, but I believe our (Canadian) reserve units still use them. This applies to any other of the one man portabe anti-tank tubes)

[Dirtweasle]

"I feel that a flaw in CM is that the guy always does it... "

Wow, that's nearly a 180 from my experience. Which is that my ATR teams go to ground instead of getting into position to fire more often than not.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by J Ruddy:

(I know the Karl G is hardly modern, but I believe our (Canadian) reserve units still use them. This applies to any other of the one man portabe anti-tank tubes)

The Regulars still use the Carl G as well; it has upgraded munitions such as the Rocket Assisted Projectile. The ERYX proved to be a failure. Look at the pics of PPCLI in Afghanistan and you will see the venerable 84mm among the weaponry.

[SgtMuhammed]

The U.S. Rangers use an upgraded version of the Carl G. Complete with Airburst rounds.

[Battlefront.com]

"Hand to hand" combat with AFVs took a LOT of balls. Fortunately for tankers, balls seemed to often be in short supply There is a well documented account of very experienced German infantry coming upon the first KV-2 in one of the Baltic states (can't remember if it was Lithuania or Latvia, but I think the latter). It took them a LONG time to knock the thing out even though it was immobilized. The first guys thought they could handle it, got mowed down, and boy... didn't that put a dampper on other attempts! To make a long story short, a lot of guys were standing around saying "I wonder what we can do to knock that out" and very few were found to say "give me a grenade bundle, I'll take it out".

Let's face it... a 40 or 50 ton steel monster coming down on you with guns a blazing is generally not a nice experience. The soldier's first instinct is to get out of its way and let someone else deal with it. Therefore it would be wrong to simulate things much differently than they are in CMx1. If you give an order to attack and it is ignored, that is realism... not a flaw in the TacAI.

Personally, I have not seen units behaving unrealistically brave. What I have seen is units badly positioned and then being forced to either react or die trying. That isn't something I think we can do much about.

Steve

[junk2drive]

""Hand to hand" combat with AFVs took a LOT of balls."

I can see it now "Whos balls mod is that?"

[Peter Cairns]

If as steve says it is mainly down too poor positioning, then perhaps waht we need is some way to limit at least initail deployments to within command .

This would effectively stop people from deploying AT teams out on their own unsupported in suicidal positions.

Peter.

[dalem]

I really think a "shoot & scoot" order, as has been mentioned above, for all types of infantry would make sense. I see a few situations where it would be more "realistic" (a thousand pardons and a shiny quarter into Charles' nutrient jar for even mentioning that word) and sensible.

- Bazooka team: One shot (hopefully a good one) and then beat feet back to a secondary cover position before the backblast settles.

- Almost any infantry team/squad hung out as a tripwire. Shoot for a few seconds to get advancing infantry to eat sod then boogie back a few dozen yards (or whatever).

I've gotta believe that this was one of the first items up on the BFC whiteboards when CMx2 was first hatched.

-dale