v1.05 Curious how you feel about small arms accuracy now.

['Card]

The general feeling I get from the game would be that accuracy is about right, but that the benefit of cover is undervalued - with the end result being that fire isn't too accurate, it's just too lethal.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by c3k:

Range 170 meters, US soldier behind a 2 meter berm, Syrian Reserve in a building unknown to moving US soldier. US soldier AT MOST only has head visible (and through camera positioning is actually UNDER the crestline, hence hidden). First shot by Syrian: kill.

WAY, WAY, WAY overmodelled.

Regards,

Ken

Its the first round or first volley or opening round accuracy that gets me. In all reality its possible that one soldier who is a marksman AND very lucky would get a first round head shot KIA Kill in the situation from 170m if it happened one time in a 100 (1:100 odds) I would not complain, but as Ken mentions, that kind of first round kill happens routinely in the game evidence of something like that can be seen in most fire fights IMHO.

FWIW

[BOOBY]

October 3, 1993 There ware large scale firefight between U.S Rangers with Delta versus Somali militia.

15 hours they fight and the result U.S took 18 KIA 70 WIA, Somali took 500+ KIA.

What is differense between militia and Special force? good training? superior of small weapon accuracy?

I think that was the mix of ground and air force firepower.

only 2 Delta snipers could hold a crash site with supported by BlackHawk.

on the other hand This fight is to certify that the only small arms can not kill a lot of soldiers like CMSF.

I like CMx1 style that conscript and even Veteran can not hold stronghold under huge firepower and they run away from stronghold. and the battle is not kill or be killed. hold or not.

Sorry about my poor English. Happy holidays BFC.

[ December 16, 2007, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: BOOBY ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by 'Card:

The general feeling I get from the game would be that accuracy is about right, but that the benefit of cover is undervalued - with the end result being that fire isn't too accurate, it's just too lethal.

That might be a factor but I think the markmanship we see in the game is very often of the highest level for all most all units in most situations against any number of targets.

I sort of feel like every soldier that pulls the trigger of his weapon has "US Spec Ops, Delta Operative" poise, skill, patience and level headedness, written all over every round they fire.

[ December 16, 2007, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[c3k]

Per the situation I posted above, the 170 meter headshot by a reserve Syrian squad versus a US soldier in motion with only his head visible: the first shot is a kill far too often.

"Sergeant! I see a head bobbing behind that berm at 170 meters!"

"Khalid, the prophet be praised, fire!"

Bang, bang, bang.

"Sergeant! I killed the immoral western imperialist. Allah be praised."

Rinse, lather, repeat.

C'mon. Once in a while? Sure. But this is repeatable.

It's NOT 100%, but the first shot resulting in a kill at that range against that size target is ridiculous.

This reminds me of the bots in the first of the Rainbow 6 games.

Regards,

Ken

[aka_tom_w]

I am not sure how hard this would be to do (probably pretty tricky to pull off well) but it would be nice to see a little more random chaos in a firefight, by that I mean unaimed fire, and soldiers refusing to fire, blind fire (extra animations needed for spray and pray AK fire when the Syrian irregulars puts his rifle over the low wall and empties the magazine blindly toward the unseen enemy) and that kind of thing.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

I am not sure how hard this would be to do (probably pretty tricky to pull off well) but it would be nice to see a little more random chaos in a firefight, by that I mean unaimed fire, and soldiers refusing to fire, blind fire (extra animations needed for spray and pray AK fire when the Syrian irregulars puts his rifle over the low wall and empties the magazine blindly toward the unseen enemy) and that kind of thing.

True, but in addition to tweaking the underlying model. Acquisition, first round accuracy, range effects, I think all the factors that go into creating a firefight need to be tweaked. It's one of those things that are so hard to get right though.

[c3k]

Agreed.

On paper, it's amazing how accurate weapons are. Then reality strikes. (This is when JasonC wades in with production stats vice casualties.)

Off the top of my head I seem to recall a stat that the US fired 10,000 rounds of small arms ammo for every casualty inflicted in Vietnam.

Go ahead and argue training, optics, fire-discipline, professional force versus draft, etc., etc. The M-4/M-16 family today has very similar accuracy as the models used in Vietnam.

Would Green US forces, unmotivated, with no optics/lasers need that level of ammo consumption in CMSF? (Toss out an order of magnitude for wastage, pilfering, mad-minutes, etc. That would leave 1,000 rounds/casualty in a firefight. Would CMSF's model show that? Keeping it all within an order of magnitude or so.)

So, using BALLISTICS as the touchstone upon which to base a firefight model seems, prima facia, wrong.

The bullet and gun are important, but only as much as the sights, the user, the motivation and the environment.

Those are the areas that seem to be in need of adjustment.

As to my earlier tests, I downgraded the Syrians from veteran to green and that produced what I thought was a better result regarding accuracy in a firefight.

Regards,

Ken

[LongLeftFlank]

Yeah, I usually use conscript/fanatic settings for Red (uncons)... this also takes some of the edge off the RPG accuracy.

[Drusus]

In my opinion in v1.04 there were three things needing adjustment.

1. Accuracy when shooting moving targets seems to be a bit high, especially at longer ranges.

2. Accuracy of somewhat suppressed troops seems a bit high.

3. There isn't enough cover

Now, 1 and 3 together mean that movement in some situations is even more lethal than it should be. If you move, you get shot, if you don't you get shot. When you add that at least in v1.04 reactive fire was slow, you get high body counts fast.

Number 2 needs some more explaining. I think there is problem with the suppression system because the troops forget too soon the incoming fire. What I mean is that troops that are in a position that will get heavily fired and has already been heavily fired should have reduced accuracy. As it is now, the suppression will go away quite fast, and then the troops will fight again like nothing has happened.

The fix for number 2 is to have the suppression to drop down in a way that the worst suppression goes away fast, but some of it remains for a quite long time. That is, the drop off is logarithmic.

Number 3 however seems to be a bit harder to fix. One fix is to just add more cover in the editor. However, in my opinion there needs to be more done. At least some terrain types should have a lot better inherent protection, or at least there should be the possibility to choose different base protection values for the action spot in the editor. A bit like making terrain rough in CMx1. There is also the proposed abstracted covering system, but of course it is better if this can be fixed without it.

By the way, how is reaction fire working in v1.05? In v1.04 I ended up area targeting the flashes I could see in the 3D view. But the virtual 20 pairs of eyes some 100 meters from the shooters couldn't see anything...

[Sgt.Rock of Easy Company]

I don't see how some of you guys are suprised by shots out to 500m. 500m prone shots are part of the qualifying with an m16 in the military.

Even without proper training (military especially), I plink at human size targets all day long with reletively innaccurate rifles (SKS). And when you give me something thats sniper worthy (K98, even a Mosin nagant), I'll put rounds downrange on a human head size target with ease.

Now granted I'm not being shot at, but at the same time, im haven't been trained one bit.

I think the accuracy of weapons in this game is dead on, if not a little under-modelled, especially for the designated marksmen (The guy was taking a 400m shot with a druganov at guys in the open and it took 11 shots before 1 kill). What really needs to be worked on is the difference of personalities and partial LOS's.

To the guy who posted about Vietnam, it was 100,000 rounds/kill I believe, but your looking at that statistic completely wrong. Vietnam is a jungle and you can't see farther than whats right in front of you. So naturally, to kill anyone, your going to be firing blindly before you actually hit something. Hence the amount of rounds before a kill happened.

Which leads me to partial LOS's. When you see people shooting in Iraq and what not, I think most of them can't see the enemy and are firing for a suppressive fire effect. They're going to be shooting at windows and doors and dark places where they either saw the enemy last or think they're going to be.

In game this should translate into, your squad see's a few people cross over a window in a building (or still standing there) and the ones that do see, shoot at it. Then everyone else follows suit. From there, since they shouldnt be able to see the whole squad, they start shooting into windows and doors, and across the building (if penetration of buildings is modelled). So after a couple hundred of collective rounds, the building has been thouroughly saturated and they enemy is either dead, retreated once area fire started happening on the bulilding, or through abstraction, was hiding behind some cover within the building that stopped rounds after they went through the wall or window.

As for personalities, it should be allowed to assume that some people will try to take aimed shots, even when under fire, others will just look over the top and try to lead fire from percieved hits (on anything) and others will be scared ****less and either not be firing or blind fire from cover (ever see that video of the black guy in the humvee manning the .50 cal? They get ambushed and he went into shock and throughout the whole thing, only fired a few bursts straight into the air from within the humvee). Naturally that would go straight into the game as is.

Basically, what Im saying is, even out to 500m (taking into consideration the weapon at hand), even if the guy is running, if he is out in the open (at least center of mass visible) and the soldier can take an aimed shot, he should be dead within the first 3 rounds, if not the first. Other than that, it depends on the situation, the personality of the men shooting, the amount of fire being recieved, and the amount of LOS on target, etc., etc.

[Guest Guest]

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[Sgt.Rock of Easy Company]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Is there any intention to tweak the lethality of small arms engagements in CMSF? Or is it where you guys want it to be right now?

Actually, thats a point I left out. Along with personalities is how people handle being wounding. A round to the leg shouldnt kill anyone unless it hits an artery. That and body armor is going to help prevent KIA's and transfer those to MIA's.

Maybe the reason CMx1 had so few "casualties" was because many wounds were small and it wasnt until the math gave out a critical wound or mortal wound that it showed up as one less infantryman.

[SgtMuhammed]

You do realize that you are arguing this point with people who have actually done this for a living?

Given that Iraq and A-stan are anything but a jungle what is your explaination for the fact that the ratio is now well over 250,000 rounds fired (actually I've seen estimates up to 400,000 but I'm being conservative) per casualty.

The longest range on the M16 qual range is 300 meters and lots of guys don't even shoot at them because you can score expert by knocking down everything else. They save the 300m rounds for closer targets.

Combat shooting is in no way shape or form the same as firing on the range or in the back country other than the fact that you pull the trigger and the round goes downrange, hopefully.

[civdiv]

Originally posted by Snake Raper:

I am going to chime in on modern weapons, aiming and lethality. I watched a video a few years ago that showed a police officer and a suspect that basically had the two of them with pistols drawn at about 5ft from each other. Within seconds both had unloaded (8-13 rounds each) and they both missed, from 5ft. Did I mention they were 5ft apart?

We in the military preach 'aimed shots' and 'one shot one kill', but the fact is that individuals are not as effective as doctrine.

There are many factors that not only play a part on the shooter, but also on the weapon and the target. Modern weapons systems with PAQ-4 or PAQ-2 or AN/PVS-14 MNVGs on the person are Gucci but they do not replace basic shooting skills. In a modern battlefield, in a perfect world, where you know the location of all enemies, a section/squad of soldiers can be absolutely obliterating on a poorly equipped group of hostiles. But that same section/squad can be wiped out in close range by people who barely know how to put a mag on an AK-47.

In game, I too have marveled at my troops being killed by AK fire from 200+m away while they run. Hard to do, and almost impossible to do again and again and again in real life.

I am a Canadian soldier and I can say that our pre-deployment training includes movement in the open, (formations and firing on the move) because it is inevitable that in Afghanistan you will be in the open when some wanker fires on you. We accept that in that opening volley at least one of your buddies is going down (otherwise why would they shoot), but we train and train again for what happens in the next few minutes.

The volume and accuracy of fire on the enemy is as much a factor of the individual as it is of the collective training that was conducted prior. But why do we not suffer 100% casualties in an ambush scenario? Simple, adrenaline. The shooters get so wound up, they anticipate the shot, the heart rate is up, there is smoke, dust and debris in the air, there are people shouting, stoppages, mag changes, fast moving targets, dodging targets, incoming fire, there is everything happening at once. Yet in a game, virtually none of that is modded. The soldiers are fearless, they are expert marksman, the battlefield makes no matter to them, their weapon is an extension of them, how could they possibly miss?

Life is more forgiving than games, a game simply cannot crunch all of the numbers for a firefight and no two are the same. It has to come down to a percentage based on an arbitrary number, plus an advantage or two and minus the enemy's advantage.

They may sound similar, but ask anyone who has done close quarter snap shooting and stood in amazement looking at an unmarked target. It happens to the best of us, even me.

Good post and though I agree with many of your points, I will differ to an extent. And I can't comment on the topic in terms of CMSF as I just got the game today and haven't installed it yet.

I agree with your points in general, and I would agree with them vis-a-vis Iraq (Where the bulk of US forces that are in Syria would have served), back during the initial invasion and before the insurgency really started going. But I differ with the affect suprise and adrenalin have on the current slice of US troops out everyday patrolling the streets of Iraq. These guys have seen more combat than anyone in the US military has since the Korean War. This is not Vietnam where you could go weeks w/o seeing the enemy, those Marines in Falluja and Ramadi were in firefights almost everyday for their entire tours. I have a good friend of mine who says he was priviledged to have kicked in about a dozen doors just during Falluja II and shot insurgent in the face, and he was just with a straight leg leg Marine unit. He says priviledged as he was well trained, operated on instincts, on each occassion he won the gun fight, and he got extremely good at it. He probably kicked in a hundred doors, he just got to shoot the enemy in about a dozen of them. And his experience was mirrored by every Marine in his battalion.

And I mean no diservice to the Canadian military but you just cannot compare Afghanistan to Iraq, it's apples and oranges. I'll use rather a crude and general anology but Afghanistan is Vietnam and Iraq is WWII in terms of the amount of action the troops are seeing. And the train-up during the predeployment phase is probably exponentially better then anything the troops in the European Theater during WWII went through even when you figure in the 'first' divisions to deploy like 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions and 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions. Iraq is a platoon and squad fight with bits of the company fight thrown in, you don't need to have whole divisions to train and make big arrows on a map. For example I am told the USMC rifle qualification course has gone from 50 rounds to over 1400 since the war started.

So yes, the guy nailing a running troop from 200 yards with an AK should be somewhere in the 99th percentile. But the guy kicking in the door and who is confronted by the insurgent 5 yards away and shoots the insurgent twice in the chest in one second w/o even thinking about it is probably going to fall into the 50th percentile if not lower.

The senior Special Operations trainer for the USMC on the West Coast with just shy of 30 years service told me back in 2004 that these guys today are better than his generation ever dreamed of being. Part of that is better training programs plus more money and assets for training, but a lot of this is guys doing multiple tours in Iraq and simply exercising their skills dozens of times during a deployment.

So I hate to sort of muddy the waters as I haven't fired the game up, but the US troops over there are very, very good at their trade. The insurgents aren't as good and in terms of the Syrians, as well trained as segments of their military may be, they are inexperienced. Even in Iraq the experience isn't really there as even the AQ guys rarely survive more than a couple of encounters with US troops. Sure, ideology and lacking a fear of death counts for something but sizable percentage of indoctrinated suicide bombers get cold feet when it comes time to initiate.

But if troops from either side are routinely cutting down a running target at 200 meters then yes, things need to be changed. I shot expert everytime I was on the range in the USMC except once (around a dozen experts), I have attended LOTS of specialized shooting courses. At 200 meters with an M16 shooting at a running soldier I might hit him once or twice maybe 30% of the time if he ran 25 meters, assuming roughly a 10 second exposure. I think I would get off roughly 5-8 well aimed shots, assuming a second to notice him, another second or two to get my weapon on him. And I am probably in the 99th percentile of the Syrian or AQ TO. And the AK is nowhere near as accurate as the M16 and not even as accurate as a 14.5 inch barrelled M4.

[Snake Raper]

Originally posted by civdiv:

And I mean no diservice to the Canadian military but you just cannot compare Afghanistan to Iraq, it's apples and oranges.

No offense taken but I wasn't comparing Afghanistan and Iraq. You are right that they are completely different in scale but they are similar in tactics when taken to the platoon and section/squad level.

We do a lot of training in the US and bring US troops up to train with us as we can both benefit from each others combat experiences. I agree that training and combat experience will create excellent soldiers that react with scary instinctive skill, but what about when they become casualties?

Replacements rarely come from a combat hardened pool, they generally (at least in our case) come from a pool of troops that trained with the main body, but stayed in Canada. As they are needed they deploy and are plugged into a platoon. So you get "green" (but well trained) troops mixed in with the veterans. The actions or inaction of these soldiers can have rather negative effects on the overall effectiveness of a section/squad.

It is just the way of combat, modern or other. No troop is 100% effective, 100% of the time in real life and this is what is hard to mod in a game.

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[civdiv]

I can't speak to the Canadian military, but at least in terms of the USMC the pre-deployment training they are getting is far superior to anything ever before seen in military history, regardless of era, conflict, etc. But I do agree that putting meaningfull rounds downrange in the middle of a sudden ambush still is affected by stress and suprise. Thinking come into the equation but many of these troops are trained to the point when thinking doesn't enter into the equation. Yes, there are the adhoc replacements that appear, but it isn't 1944 when guys didn't get any down time as they were either fighting or digging foxholes. What we are seeing today is really the 12 hour war. A given unit will have 12 hours of operations, plus an hour of mission prep beforehand, and an hour of debrief afterwards, so basically a 14 hour work day. Yes, if the **** hits the fan they will be working longer then that, but basically it's a 14 or 15 hour work day. After that they are doing maintainance, doing paperwork, or eating and sleeping. They are not isolated in foxholes the way the troops in WWII were, so the learning curve for newbies is much higher as they are being interacted with and they are learning the lessons of the trade.

But I would make the case that even those green guys that are individual replacements are getting much more combat oriented training than ever before seen in the history of warfare. That's the case at least in the USMC, not sure about National Guard, Army Reserves, or Canada.

[ December 16, 2007, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]

[JasonC]

I am going to focus on Drusus' numbers 2 and 3. I think they interact, and I think a failure to fully appreciate how they interact is responsible for most of the failures of wargames or simulations to accurately model combat firepower and marksmenship. I do not think it is fundamentally about motion, adreline, and being flustered (though that no doubt counts some in some cases, too).

The first thing to notice is that the ammo available to everyone is so high that even accuracy achievements an order of magnitude lower than in training would instantly result in annihilation for one side or the other. Nobody needs 9 out of 10 accuracy, or even 3 out of 10 accuracy. If people achieve 3 out of 100 accuracy, every mag is an enemy man, and every man is carrying several mags. They'd all be hit in minutes.

They aren't. Ergo, exposures are such that one cannot generally fire even 30 times at accuracies even as high as 3%. Ergo, there is cover. Where is it coming from?

Cover and suppression are more intimately related than games or sims allow for. The reality is, in nearly every location there are spots that will be entirely invisible to the enemy, in the limited number of locations where he is right now. Men actively seek those locations, and are extremely good at finding them. Very rapidly.

Once in such a position, the man's own effective firepower dwindles, because he can't see the present enemy positions. And they can't see him. Both sides are perfectly safe, for the instant. Even though movement, even slight movements, may bring exposure to one or another enemy position.

If both sides suppress sufficiently, you get the typical empty battlefield stand off, in which tons of ground between the parties can be seen by some men on either side, but no actual enemy can be seen. If anyone moves into that middle area, they will take fire. Often no one does. Sometimes some do, take fire, and get hit. Sometimes they return the fire effectively and hit the only man who can see them from their new spot. And sometimes they just look around for another spot of dead ground, and find one. And the situation re-freezes.

What is driving the whole thing is that the degree of cover one has achieved is inversely related to the threat one can pose to others with one's own weapon.

This is *not* seen in e.g. CMx1, where a man in a trench is 9% exposed but can fire at full firepower at any enemy unit within LOS. There, his firepower is fully intact, while his exposure is minimal. Such a mix is typically *not* available in tactical cover (as opposed to deliberately engineered firing positions, I mean). Usually, one is less exposed only because one is lower, in a site with less LOS, and as a direct result one's own outgoing firepower is dramatically lowered as well.

Suppression is not a psychological panic state, at bottom. It is not the case that a unit is mentally more upset and therefore unable to fire, but still just as exposed to enemy incoming. Instead, what happens is the individuals within the unit are persuaded to shift to "deep" positions with very limited LOS - which reduces their ability to fire, but also and by the exact same cause and in the same measure, reduces their exposure to enemy fire.

Imagine a unit on "pinned" status can't fire, but also cannot be harmed by enemy fire, unless an enemy moves to some new location that re-establishes LOS.

This is also why the maneuver part of fire and maneuver is so critical. The situation rapidly freezes if neither side maneuvers, because actually visible locations are soon occupied only by casualties, and anyone able to move out of them has long since done so. From that point on, only new movements can re-established pair-wise LOS. And before that happens, any additional fire will flat miss everybody, regardless of the volume used etc.

There are only two ways any wargame or simulation is going to model this correctly. Either it super-accurately models a whole range of the critical subsystems involved (which I will list below), or it is "designed for effect" to correctly duplicate the pattern of exposure and suppression that actually occurs, without modeling the details whereby it happens, physically speaking.

To get it as an emergent result of perfectly modeled subsystems, you need -

(1) hyper accurate modeling of every fold of the terrain, every object

(2) hyper accurate modeling of the limitations on spotting and LOS caused by physical orientation, head position, attention, sight picture, timing, etc

(3) hyper accurate modeling of the individual soldier's ability to read terrain for safer locations, judge all impinging LOS, ignore all other considerations and get to safety

(4) hyper accurate modeling of the motivational factors against shifting position even in tiny, micro ways, that increase possible or actual exposure

(5) accurate modeling of the way (3) and (4) depend on volume of incoming fire, recently seen traumatic experiences, animal fear etc

There is no way any simulation that abtracts cover and ground at a large scale can hope to get the first few right. There is no way a simulation that tracks pairwise sighting in simple ways and as a yes or no question can get the middle ones right. There is no way a simulation that abtracts the last couple by a single morale state variable is going to get the last couple right. And there is no way an AI that has trouble doing elementary things, is going to be as good as the real combatants are at finding the overlooked covered locations.

Realistically, this means no simulation is going to get cover and suppression relations even remotely right, unless it designs for effect in this matter. The more accurately the simulation models the physical ability to shoot from point A to point B without modeling this subsystem accurately, the higher the specific lethality will be, and the more it will depart from reality as seen in the field.

This is an old and well understood issue in wargaming. Tobruk wanted to use physical firepower considerations to decide how many many would be hit when unit A fired at unit B. And the result was its portrayal of infantry fighting was hopeless, and reduced to the statement "unless in deep field fortifications, infantry under any kind of fire is already dead". Squad leader, coming out not long after, instead designed for effect and made morale effects the fundamental result of infantry fire - and revolutionized tactical wargaming.

How should one design for effect with suppression and cover?

First, a word about marginal exposures. When firepower is high enough, it doesn't matter if incoming firepower is reduced by half or by three quarters - if fire is possible, the unit will die. Much of CMSF fire feels like this right now. It is a standard event for a single APC with a vehicle MG to have LOS to a squad location, and for the nearly automatic result to be that every member of that squad is slaughtered in less than one minute. This is very rare in reality. But if exposure just went down marginally, not "away", then the vehicle MG would just fire a bit longer and the end result would be the same - and just as wrong, empirically.

Ergo, some level of suppression must be compatible with the unit fired on "covering up" to such an extent, that future losses to existing shooters become simply impossible. Like CMx1 units behind walls.

There can be cover requirements for a given level of suppression or exposure reduction. But for most types, it should top out at "total cover". Even for open ground, higher suppression should allow dramatically higher effective cover or reduced exposure, but not perfection. That is actually the true danger of open ground. But e.g. a trench, a building, a wall - all should be able to push to total cover if the unit is suppressed enough.

The other important design for effect bit to get right is the "dyadic" nature of suppression based cover. What do I mean? I mean suppression based cover adaptation is best against the shooters already known, who caused it in the first place. A new unknown shooter, from a new direction, will not face the same cover strength. The same shooters will be able to reduce the cover strength by moving - though moves that change both range and angle to target only modestly will have no effect.

The idea would be to track this the way non-borg sighting is tracking pair-wise spots. Just drag another number along, a pair-wise "suppression LOS reduction". It bumps up whenever *either end* increases in suppression level. Conceptually, both units are effectively "shying away" from each other - in sight picture terms, in small movement terms, in cover use terms. One or both are "going deeper", and it is getting harder and harder to physically see the other guy.

Movement will reduce the suppression cover level. Upright movement more than prone movement.

Units with high suppression level should fire less frequently. At a sufficient level this will turn firing off completely, but well before that the firing rate will drop far belong theoretical rates of fire. The men simply do not see targets for much of the time. They are too low for that, their bobbing heads are in the down position, they are not "gophering" up and down so much, etc.

This is what the game is currently missing. It is in good company - nobody has really gotten this right before, so it would be a major advance to actually do it correctly, with a pair-wise "non-borg" implementation.

I hope this is helpful.

[Sgt.Rock of Easy Company]

Originally posted by SgtMuhammed:

You do realize that you are arguing this point with people who have actually done this for a living?

Given that Iraq and A-stan are anything but a jungle what is your explaination for the fact that the ratio is now well over 250,000 rounds fired (actually I've seen estimates up to 400,000 but I'm being conservative) per casualty.

The longest range on the M16 qual range is 300 meters and lots of guys don't even shoot at them because you can score expert by knocking down everything else. They save the 300m rounds for closer targets.

Combat shooting is in no way shape or form the same as firing on the range or in the back country other than the fact that you pull the trigger and the round goes downrange, hopefully.

Hey, going off what my father has told me about his qualifying (I've seen his expert pins, which is the only score he's ever gotten). He told me he had to do 500m prone slow fire when he qualifyed and judging from the basic infantry TM (or FM cant remember) that I read of his, they had the 500m prone slow fire target card in the back, so it was probably the truth.

He's served 2 tours in Iraq recently (he just came home January 2007 after 2 years of being gone) and has had a very fruitful 30 plus years of military service. I usually don't doubt his word on military matters.

A lot of my post is my own shots in the dark as to why certain things are the way they are, and from what I can infer how things are from my fathers experiences. (that and some good old reading and research).

As for why theres like 250,000 or 400,000 rounds/kill, I would say that urban environments would be extremely similar to jungle in terms of LOS and whatnot. That and your so point blank sometimes (within 100m is pretty damn close, let alone room to room or buildings) that I would assume people would shoot as many rounds as it took before they are sure that the enemy is down or dead, whether they see them or not.

[LongLeftFlank]

I like Jason's analysis very much, and it reconciles with my observations about only a limited number of guys shooting at any given time.

At long last we might see the end of the hated "crawl of death", as the crawlers quickly find cover and fade from sight.

Also, I've long bemoaned the inability of either CMx1 or CMx2 (so far) to realistically model infiltration tactics that are such an important part of asymetric warfare even in the era of night vision gear. Functionality as described here would likely address that issue.

[Pandur]

i think some of you guys should play more on red side. just becouse the syrians can pop a guy runing at 200m+ once in a while they arent overmodeled in my view

if you play with RED side more often you will notice that these guys are surely not overmodeled, but you will notice that the syrians are more or less without a chance when they dont hit like they do now. if they would hit even worse, hell, campain mission 1 will be doable with 0 US to 200+ Syrian kills.

i mean the statistical "end" results are allready off(not talking about the single incidents described in this thread) when you are a familiar with the game.

if small arms accuracy is lowered, it should be lowered for both sides equal becouse they are more or less in balance right now, in my view.

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[Thomm]

There seem to be enough advisers around with real world experience (which I hope they can deal with), and I cannot compete with those, but I feel that something is off with firefights, it is just that I cannot pin it down.

Some observations:

A) The Lemming effect, a TacAI issue. A Red squad enters a building on 'Hunt' and the point man/men is/are blasted by much superior Blue firepower from an adjacent building. The remainder of the squad should IMHO stop cold and retreat out the back door to fight another day. Instead, they crawl towards the enemy to die like their fellow soldiers.

In one of my attempts at winning Al Huqf with the Red force, I placed three squads in a row along a street that the Blue force had to cross. Whenever a Blue soldier came into view, almost all Red soldiers opened up at once, basically shooting through each other. This, by itself is not realistic from a psychological point of view (for soldiers that are not specially trained for instinctive shooting).

B.1) Nevertheless, the Blue forces kept advancing across the street, only to be cut down one by one.

B.2) Some Blue soldiers went prone and returned fire ... being able to hit some of my soldiers. An incredible feat in the face of the fact that 3 squads were shooting at these individual soldiers.

C) I had one Red squad being decimated when entering a building with a Blue squad lying prone in front of it. Did not strike me as too realistic.

I tend towards the opinion that the Blue soldiers are modeled quite accurately, although this gives them almost super-human powers relative to the Red side (which is probably realistic, but not an awful lot of fun ...).

But the Red side should do, at the very least, more in terms of self-preservation to counter the capabilities of the Blue forces.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Spartan]

I also would comment that maybe the morale levels need some attention. I have rarely seen troops run for cover. They just lay low and due to the fire modelling discused here they die....