Squad and Crew Management

[RMC]

Based on this comment from Moon I think ToW is giving us a whole new tactical dimension to the game.

Originally posted by Moon:

So what you can do is adjust your deployed core force each time by swapping out equipment and also swapping out crews of course. If you want to really start micromanaging you can take your most experienced driver and put him behind the wheel of your best tank for example. Or exchange a crappy noob with a really good experienced gunner on that Tiger.

The fact that each man is simulated individually really puts a new meaning into concepts like "upgrading" I just now realized...

The later CC games allowed players to rotate units in and out of the "Kampfgruppe" for each individual battle. ToW is going to allow moving men around individually. The ramifications of this strike me as rather profound.

I can collect my best tankers in my best tank, the best infantry in the same squad. In so doing I may be forming a weaker crew or weaker squad that will be less capable and less resilient. A lot depends on just how interwoven these individual attributes with the combat engine, but just having the option to reorganize this way seems huge to me.

How much influence does a good tank commander have on his tank in the game? Is it better to have the best crewman be the gunner, driver or commander?

As a player will you follow the US model and make a bunch of equally capable units or will you go with the German model and create a handful of very capable units with a mass of less capable ones? Admittedly those were strategic level decisions and not tactical like in the game, but you get the idea.

I like the idea, because real commanders do this kind of thing all the time. But I suspect it might be open to abuse and that task organization will become an important consideration, perhaps even de rigeur, in multiplayer combats.

Will the player be able to completely change the organization of his forces forming fewer, larger squads or more, smaller teams? I guess that has already been done with the hotkey grouping feature, but I'm thinking along the lines of task organization before the battle that should, I think, have an influence on how the morale system works. I wouldn't want trooper A to get panicked because the rest of his squad, 500 meters away and out of LOS, is taking heavy fire. Conversely he shouldn't be superman because the rest of his "real" squad is tucked safely away in a trench while the group he is with is pinned down.

Thoughts?

[Michael Dorosh]

More importantly, and in line with your <font color="purple">purple prose</font>, will the boxtop for ToA be <font color="lavender">lavender</font>? I think that is the true test of a game's potential to be considered a 'classic.'

[Moon]

How much influence does a good tank commander have on his tank in the game? Is it better to have the best crewman be the gunner, driver or commander?

From my playing so far I think that the TC has the biggest impact on the performance of a tank. He has the biggest influence on spotting enemy units for example, which has a direct impact on what the rest of the crew does. As for the second part of the question - since each soldier is rated in these three akill areas anyway (among others), the question is simple to answer: put the best driver into the driver spot, the best gunner behind the gun etc.

Will the player be able to completely change the organization of his forces forming fewer, larger squads or more, smaller teams?

Yes, to some extent. There is a limit in how many "units" (i.e. squad, tank, gun, each is one unit) you can deploy at start. So you cannot break up squad of 12 into 3 squads of 4, because you'll run out of space in your deployment roster. But you can (and sometimes wil be forced to I guess) start with "incomplete" crews/squads. You can create an elite squad from your best and most experienced soldiers, or you can disperse them equally to several units. Since you also have control over their progress by being able to assign experience points to raise skills, promote them in rank, and give out medals (increases morale for example), you really can shape your core units during the campaign to your liking.

Martin

[Markus86]

I want this game NOW

sorry but I had to say that

take my money ... now, PLEASE

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by RMC:

Thoughts?

ok, since you asked:

"The later CC games allowed players to rotate units in and out of the "Kampfgruppe" for each individual battle. ToW is going to allow moving men around individually. The ramifications of this strike me as rather profound. "

well, in cc you could simply choose not to use them in the next battle.

mostly made sense for tank crews whom you couldnt afford to buy a new fahrbaren Untersatz.

otherwise, a depleted squad ior even crew could siomply be held back, if you didnt thrust them forward, there was hardly a difference between not using them *for* the battle and not using them *in* the battle.

"I can collect my best tankers in my best tank, the best infantry in the same squad. In so doing I may be forming a weaker crew or weaker squad that will be less capable and less resilient. A lot depends on just how interwoven these individual attributes with the combat engine, but just having the option to reorganize this way seems huge to me."

to me, too. it is very gamey but aklso very rewarding.

"Platoon Manager, the new subgame of ToW."

seriously, looking forward to it. Big time.

"How much influence does a good tank commander have on his tank in the game? Is it better to have the best crewman be the gunner, driver or commander? "

fist of all, they have different skills, driving, marksmanship, morale or somefink.

we dont know yet how crew managment will work exactly, whether you will get soandso much "experioeence points" that you can freely distribute for any skill on any soldier, or whether there will be specific driving skill points, mnarksmanship exp. points etc. to be awarded.

IMO most everybody will probably prefer to nurture the gunner, as driving and command/awareness can largely be done by the player himself micromanaging pathing and target selection / situational awareness (see my other post about how the early war C&C deficits and awareness deficits of early french/polish/russian tanks will not be an issue).

"As a player will you follow the US model and make a bunch of equally capable units or will you go with the German model and create a handful of very capable units with a mass of less capable ones? Admittedly those were strategic level decisions and not tactical like in the game, but you get the idea."

you will, and I will, of course creatde a few select "favorite" pet units/crews that you will nurture along. but you already pointed this out yourself.

in the long run of a campaign, depending on how generous the program will be re. experience points etc., you might as well end up with many highly developed crews. like in cc3, where towards the end of the large campaign most of your snipers and many of the tank commanders and gunners were Majors serving happily alongside each other.

of course there is a possible an inherent danger here: lopsiding a campaign.

if it is tailorted towards a specific player performance, it might easily become lopsided up or down due to two opposite circuli viciosi: if a player performs above expectation, his soldiers will become beteer than the computer setup of the campaign accounts for, meaning it will be even easier for him to also win the next battle better than expected, even more so. a self-reinforcing effect. the longer the campaign lasts, the more lopsided and easier it will be for the successful player.

the reverse can also happen. if a player fails to meet expected performance, he has less ability to improve his troops, making it even harder for him to win the next battle which was tailored to be a challenge to a player who has successfully improved his troops. a downwards spiral, he might find himself towards the end of a long campaign to battle trying to fight huge masses of high quality enemies with only a few green ill-equipped troops.

the original Close Combat, only the original CC, countered this with its dynamic campaign flow. it would get harder ifn a player played very well in last battle, yet it would again become a bit easier in the next battle if he failed to do well. (of course the player also advanced faster in the time-line so he was never really punished for good performance)

this generally worked to keep it a challenge for every kind of player.

in the later CC's, this was no more, and they generally became lopsided easily after a while. I remember well how especially cc3 wasn't really a challenge after half the campaign since you already had a top-notch team together. I can also imagien how poor players would eventually have found themselves fighting off hordes of heavy tanks with just a few green troops and inadequate equipment.

c3 accounted only minimally for performance within the individual operations by giving point boni when the flow moved to one of the end maps (more points for the poor player who retreated omne map); so the smart tactic was to fuirst withdraw a map and lose it intentionally, harvest the huge amoun t of points to equip your troops, then quickly go back and conquer all the maps needed for the operation. that way you could still equip your troops even tho the initial battle looked weak and didnt give you the points required to re-fit with new tanks, guns etc.

we dont know which path ToW will take - and thios is one of the things where the demo will NOT help.

"I like the idea, because real commanders do this kind of thing all the time. But I suspect it might be open to abuse and that task organization will become an important consideration, perhaps even de rigeur, in multiplayer combats. "

real commander do it a lot?

are you sure?

my bet would be they do not even have neat little graphics showing just how proficient each platoon or company member is with a value from 0 to 100 for different abilities.

back when you had a command, did *you* know as a company CO just which of your hundred or so soldiers was the best to man one of the 50cals or one of the TOW launchers or whatever you had? and I bet you would not have been able to have one of the platoon lieutenants man the M60 because he would be the most proficient with it, or have Pv2 Shlonk lead a section because he shows such good leadership abilities.

Naw, it is gamey. That is not to say it isnt good.

CC, the original CC, tracked proficiency on a one to hundred scale for each soldier for each type of weapon! but it didnt show it, it only showed general color coding of whether someone was generally a good soldier or not. but that didnt tell you whether he was maybe very good with the K98k but sucked real bad as a MP-40 or PzF user, or was a poor melee fighter.

only later did clever fans (Fisla?) create thris-party programs that opened up these innards and let you see all the values that the game internally tracked for each soldier.

I think this more general impression of good soldier / poor soldier is a bit more realistic than having a fixed value of "78" for

marksmanship or somefink.

"Will the player be able to completely change the organization of his forces forming fewer, larger squads or more, smaller teams? I guess that has already been done with the hotkey grouping feature, but I'm thinking along the lines of task organization before the battle that should, I think, have an influence on how the morale system works. I wouldn't want trooper A to get panicked because the rest of his squad, 500 meters away and out of LOS, is taking heavy fire. Conversely he shouldn't be superman because the rest of his "real" squad is tucked safely away in a trench while the group he is with is pinned down. "

A very valid concern.

I had a big laugh, and a big shock, when I read in another thread that CMSF would have single soldiers but not individual LOS/LOF. That would be even worse than the later cc problem where the rather large squads did have individual LOS but squad placement was buggy/hard. that guy with the last PzF somehow always ended up in the back of the squad with no LOS from the back of the building to the Sherman parked in front.

apparently, ToW will have neither of these problems. But the one you describe is a valid concern.

the problem is also that we dont exactly have any idea of how the morale model will work. is attachment to a good squad leader all that is needed? or do you have to be close to him? is it a O/I issue like in CM with its brown/black connection lines? or is it more fuzzy with a "the closer the better" function?

does *any* leader do, or does it have to the OOB leader of the specific squad ?

???

[RMC]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

fist of all, they have different skills, driving, marksmanship, morale or somefink.

we dont know yet how crew managment will work exactly, whether you will get soandso much "experioeence points" that you can freely distribute for any skill on any soldier, or whether there will be specific driving skill points, mnarksmanship exp. points etc. to be awarded.

I know. But I'm already thinking in terms of how to game it for maximum effect. You start with a given alottment of troops and skills. Moon already said that having a good commander seemed to have the most effect on tank performance. So maybe you can put the best leader in the tank to maximize the tank's efficiency, and take the good gunner out of the tank and put him on the PAK.

you will, and I will, of course creatde a few select "favorite" pet units/crews that you will nurture along. but you already pointed this out yourself.

I certainly think the player tendency will be to create his own Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Wiking as his pets while the bulk of his forces are Handschar and Skanderbeg.

I wonder though, if this is the best course of action. It may in fact be better to try to spread the quality around than to hoard it in select units. You never know. It probably won't matter much in single player, but the cutthroat environment of online play should quickly identify the tactics with the most payoff.

Roleplaying games already have this kind of formatting going on. They're called "builds." We'll see the same kind of thing. There'll be discussions like "put 2 points in the gunner to get him to level 3 where he'll get a 10% first round hit probability bonus. Then put 3 points in the commander so he has +20% on spotting outside the tank's facing."

real commander do it a lot?

are you sure?

my bet would be they do not even have neat little graphics showing just how proficient each platoon or company member is with a value from 0 to 100 for different abilities.

back when you had a command, did *you* know as a company CO just which of your hundred or so soldiers was the best to man one of the 50cals or one of the TOW launchers or whatever you had? and I bet you would not have been able to have one of the platoon lieutenants man the M60 because he would be the most proficient with it, or have Pv2 Shlonk lead a section because he shows such good leadership abilities.

Not like that of course, but commanders Task Organize all the time. Cut a squad or two over to another platoon or company. Battalion consolidating all Co. mortars in one location to mass fires. Companies creating assault sections and taking the MGs for a support section etc etc.

It's a pet peeve of mine that wargames all seem to follow the various TO&Es to the letter as best they can when in reality no tactical unit ever looks like the books. They've got in-lieu-of equipment, are short personnel, or have sections parceled out to other units.

apparently, ToW will have neither of these problems. But the one you describe is a valid concern.

the problem is also that we dont exactly have any idea of how the morale model will work. is attachment to a good squad leader all that is needed? or do you have to be close to him? is it a O/I issue like in CM with its brown/black connection lines? or is it more fuzzy with a "the closer the better" function?

does *any* leader do, or does it have to the OOB leader of the specific squad ?

I'm guessing that the only leaders that matter are those who are part of the actual squad/team/crew. I haven't seen anything that looks like a command group in any of the screenies, but that might just be because they're so overwhelmingly geared towards the cool toys.

I suspect that there may not be a global force morale aspect either. Both CC and CM had it some form and I think it is appropriate.

Moon's AAR seems to indicate that flagging morale can be boosted by environmental factors like the arrival of reinforcements, but it's hard to say how it works.

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by Moon:

From my playing so far I think that the TC has the biggest impact on the performance of a tank. He has the biggest influence on spotting enemy units for example,

which prompts an important question.

while you can compensate for a poor situational awareness of the individual tank's AI by manually ordering them around, you as the MegaBorg depend on the enemy units being spotted at all in the first place.

so, the ulötimate question is, who is best at spotting enemy units?

a tank commander? a tank gunner?

first has a good all-around view unless he's unbuttoned in a non-german tank.

second has these fine optics to identify enemies at large distances.

both their potential goes to hell ass soon as the tank moves.

so, what about infantry? are there HQ units especially apt using scissor binoculars? are there dedicated recon squads?

what about guns? HMGs?

just who has the best spotting ability ceteris paribus (= given they all have the same spotting/experience value) ?

[graetwulff]

we can give the soldiers medals that make it thorw the fight about what about the one or ones who do not but was in the right time and right place to kill that enemy unit or what not. then he dies can we give him a medal?

[RMC]

[M Hofbauer]

rotflpmp

[Megakill]

It is very important to have a top-notch gunner in a tank. Faster reloading, higher accuracy, etc. Elite tank crew can very often survive the encounter of 1:2 or 1:3 ratio.

[k-trout]

Will there be leaders who, either at the beginning or through the course of a campaign, have an adverse effect on morale? Maybe a green Lieutenant, or a squad leader who gets too many of his guys killed.

You'd be better off not using them for the morale or command hit, but you have to in order to keep your unit together.

I apoligize if this has been addressed before, but I haven't come across this question in the other topics I've read.

[Moon]

We figure that many noob players can fill (most of) that role So no, it's not in the game.

Martin

[Juardis]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by RMC:

Thoughts?

ok, since you asked:

"I can collect my best tankers in my best tank, the best infantry in the same squad. In so doing I may be forming a weaker crew or weaker squad that will be less capable and less resilient. A lot depends on just how interwoven these individual attributes with the combat engine, but just having the option to reorganize this way seems huge to me."

to me, too. it is very gamey but aklso very rewarding. </font>

[RMC]

It's gamey in that in reality you've got cohesion issues. You don't rebuild your company willy nilly after every engagement. You incorporate replacements and what not, but you don't do too much of the moving individuals around. When task-organizing you try to maintain organic elements as much as possible.

So in the game you can mix and match and reconfigure without penalty. That makes it open to abuse and hence gamey. It's a cool feature and one I am looking forward to, but gamey nontheless.

[Michael Dorosh]

Dick Winters talks about using his "best killers" in his newly published autobiography. Jives with SLA Marshall and his "natural killers" talk, though SLAM is mostly and widely crucified these days (especially by Winters, and for good reason).

Not gamey at all. Best fighters when concentrated also bear the brunt of the casualties - so their advantage may be a short-lived one...

[stone75]

I agree with RMC, it is gamey. Crews worked together and became familiar with one another almost knowing what the others are thinking through living in the same steel box for many months.

Take my job as a scafolder for example, we work mainly in 2's and 3's, usually in a gang for 2-3 years. Its like the other guy knows you so well you almost predict what hes going to do next and thus the job runs smooth and fast and you make plenty of money. Shove another guy in the gang experienced or not and you start getting in each others way even though we all get the same basic training.

Therfore i think if you start splitting crews to make uber crews, you should lose xp or just not allow it. Granted casualty replacement and the combining of crews would happen to make a full crew but i doubt micro managing each tanker.

Also you have the consideration of morale impact on the crew, who know they just lost a good commander for the guy who keeps screwing up, they rely on each other with their lives.

"take your best snipers, put them here, take some hardy souls, place them there, and get your fastest guys to create a diversion".

Your talking about different fighting elements. Grouping snipers fine, a situation may arrise for the need for multiple sniper cover from many squads. Grouping fast men again its for the situation at hand. However, a tank crew and tank is a single entity, group fast tanks yes, group tanks with long accurate fire yes but not the crews.

Steve

[ August 18, 2006, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: stone75 ]

[RMC]

What does Winters say about SLAM? I've always thought SLAM's natural fighters idea was spot on. I know a lot of the WWII generation seem to think that the idea of a soldier not using his weapon in combat is offensive. My grandfather's (C Co. 338RCT, 85th ID) commentary on it was that in a squad of 12 men you had 3 or 4 who "were worth a damn."

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by RMC:

What does Winters say about SLAM? I've always thought SLAM's natural fighters idea was spot on. I know a lot of the WWII generation seem to think that the idea of a soldier not using his weapon in combat is offensive. My grandfather's (C Co. 338RCT, 85th ID) commentary on it was that in a squad of 12 men you had 3 or 4 who "were worth a damn."

He is pissed at SLAM for not characterizing Brecourt Manor correctly in NIGHT DROP - he says in the book that R.D. Winters went back to Utah Beach to get 4 Shermans before the assault - Marshall's version was completely fiction, obviously.

As for the 20 percent thing, Winters simply gives a sly "that certainly didn't apply to Easy Company at Brecourt" though he does describe how he tended to pick his best fighters for individual assignments. I'll try and get the direct quotes typed out for you - just bought the book yesterday and got about 100 pages done last night.

A Canadian author pretty much agrees with Marshall; Strome Galloway insisted most riflemen could have fought onto the objective with pitchforks instead of rifles because they either never fired them in action, or else never had a chance to get onto the limited range space in England to practice their marksmanship.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by stone75:

Take my job as a scafolder for example, we work mainly in 2's and 3's, usually in a gang for 2-3 years. Its like the other guy knows you so well you almost predict what hes going to do next and thus the job runs smooth and fast and you make plenty of money.

And what do you do once a guy on your crew loses his nerve? Or one of them is killed, or a new crew comes along and has no one experienced to show them how to get the job done?

I suspect scaffolding is a little bit unlike blowing people's heads off for a living...

[Blackcat]

Originally posted by stone75:

I agree with RMC, it is gamey. Crews worked together and became familiar with one another almost knowing what the others are thinking through living in the same steel box for many months...

That may have been true in some armies in some theatres, but by no means all. If you read Ken TOUT's books about his experiences as a British Tanker in Normandy and beyond you'll see plenty of examples where crew members were moved from tank to tank. Primarily, it would seem, to keep some sort of balance in crew quality after taking casualties. BOSCOWEN mentions the same sort of thing going on in the Guards Armoured Division in the same campaigns.

It would seem that, at least in British armour in NE Europe '44-45, it was very rare if not unheard of for crews to be together for very long.

Cheers

[Michael Dorosh]

As promised - Winters on Marshall:

(SHAEF) combat historian S.L.A. Marshall immediately began conducting after-action reports on the combat in Normandy as soon as there was a lull in combat. In publishing his subsequent Night Drop, he alleged that less than 20 percent of the soldiers actually fired their weapons in combat. Marshall obviously had not visited Easy Company, because all its troopers had ben decisively engaged. Moreover, Marshall concentrated on the experiences of West Point officers and paid scant attention to those front-line officers who had not graduated from the U.S. Military Academy. Had he spoken to a more comprehensive group of junior officers, he might have drawn different conclusions. My personal encounter with Marshall was relatively brief. He pulled me into a tent with all the senior officers to discuss Easy Company's role on D-Day. There was a hell of a lot of brass in that tent, all anxious for Marshall to make them famous. I couldn't have cared less. I simply related how we established a base of fire and attacked one gun at a time. Because the interview meant absoulutely nothing to me at the time, I told my story as quickly as I could and departed. As a result, Marshall didn't say anything special about Easy Company - and what he did say was totally fabricated. Marshall downplayed the contribution of the men and claimed that Strayer's 2nd Battalion had kept the German battery entertained at "long range while Captain R.D. Winters hiked to Utah Beach, borrowed four Shermans from the 4th Infantry Division, and sicced them on the enemy guns." I don't know what action Marshall was describing, but it sure wasn't the destruction of the battery at Brecourt Manor.

Dick Winters and Colonel Cole Kingseed, BEYOND BAND OF BROTHERS, pp.110-111

And Winters on "natural killers" (pp.93-94):

Because we were so intimate(ly acquainted) with each other, I knew the strengths of each of my troopers. It was not accidental that I had selected my best men, Compton, Guarnere, and Malarkey in one group, Lipton and Ranney in the other. These men comprised Easy Company's "killers," soldiers who instinctively understood the intricacies of battle. In both training and combat, a leader senses who his killers are. I merely put them in a position where I could utilized their talents most effectively.....In reality,...your killers are few and far between...The problem, of course, lies in the fact that casualties are highest among your killers, hence the need to return them to the front as soon as possible in the hope that other "killers" emerge.

[ August 18, 2006, 08:04 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[YankeeDog]

Some tangential comments:

From M Hofbauer's post:

"I had a big laugh, and a big shock, when I read in another thread that CMSF would have single soldiers but not individual LOS/LOF."

Not entirely accurate. According to very recent posts by Steve, it is true that CMSF LOS done on a team basis -- i.e. each Squad, MG team, etc. is a single "unit" for spotting purposes.

So, AIUI, if one soldier in a squad spots and enemy unit, all members of his squad/team instantly become aware of the enemy unit. Probably a reasonable abstraction, given that information would travel pretty quickly within a squad or team.

However, I believe only the outgoing side of the spotting equation is done this way in CMSF. So a squad may spot as a group, but it might spot anything from a single soldier of an enemy squad, up to the whole squad, depending on the situation.

And LOF is calculated individually, on a soldier-by-soldier basis. So while the whole squad spots as a group, it is quite possible that only a few members, or even just one member of the squad actually has LOF to a given target, and can fire on it.

At least, that's my understanding of it. But don't take my word for it; read the stuff Steve's posted in the last couple of weeks for yourself, and draw your own conculsions. . .

As for SLA Marshall, IMHO it's pretty clear he played it pretty "fast and loose" with his data to support conclusions he had already made. This cast a shadow on his entire body of work for me.

His conclusions might be correct, anyway. Or not. Hard to say since he was so sloppy with his method. A shame, really.

Cheers,

YD

[stone75]

Quote" And what do you do once a guy on your crew loses his nerve? Or one of them is killed, or a new crew comes along and has no one experienced to show them how to get the job done?

I suspect scaffolding is a little bit unlike blowing people's heads off for a living..."

Sorry, maybe i wrote it wrong, my point about scafolding was to show how men who stick together through time work better together and thus regular swapping of crews should take an xp hit. Sorry if i sounded like i was comparing my job to war, not my intention.

Losing ones nerve and head blown off, both to me casualties and like i put in my post, replacements in this situation are inevitable.

Experienced guys needed to show new guys the ropes...i agree, thats why a battered division would often send experienced crews back to the training divisions for refiting of the division. These men would then help bring rookies up to scratch and often form crews with them. This way you have a crew that have trained together for a few months ready to fight. I just dont feel this is in the scale of the game.

Steve

[Blackcat]

Originally posted by stone75:

Experienced guys needed to show new guys the ropes...i agree, thats why a battered division would often send experienced crews back to the training divisions for refiting of the division. These men would then help bring rookies up to scratch and often form crews with them. This way you have a crew that have trained together for a few months ready to fight. I just dont feel this is in the scale of the game.

Steve,

In which army and in which campaign? It certainly wasn't done like taht by the allies in NE Europe.

Cheers

Phil