Philosophical Question about victory conditions

[Oudy]

After looking at most of the scripts included with the game, often you must destroy virtually all of the enemy forces to win. I know that in real life most attacks weren't pressed home until everyone was killed. It's only fair that our poor AI commanders shouldn't do this either.

What I'm trying to decide is what a reasonable percentage of casualties would be before a commander decides to break off the attack and withdraw. The percentage will probably vary between different nations. For example, Soviet commanders may be willing to accept a higher percentage of casualties than an American commander.

Off the top of my head, I thought that you might begin to think about breaking off your attack at somewhere between 40-50% casualties, but I'm really not sure. I would appreciate some input about this issue.

Thanks

Oudy

[monkeezgob]

I think it's difficult to generalize about this sort of thing Oudy. It'll depend on various factors and should really differ for each scenario.

The quality of the troops taking part.

Their experience.

Morale.

At what stage in the campaign/war the engagment takes place.

Strategic value of the objective.

I'd have thought all these factors (and others)should have some sort of bearing on the decision to press forward or break off.

[Jeff Duquette]

Hi Oudy:

Good observation. Totally agree that annihilation would be an atypical result rather than the norm. Pinning a precise number down will always be subject to debate. Moreover as soon as someone tosses out a hard and fast number, someone else will invariably point out that such-and-such unit lost 75% at the battle of blah-blah-blah and were still fighting like devils – or whatever. I think your percentages are defensible, and tend to make far more sense than battles of total annihilation.

Here is some additional information on the subject that a guy could use – or chuck into the trash…

From Danny Parker’s “Battle of the Bulge” (although I think Parker derived the information from T.N. Dupuy).

“The rates are important since they determine how long a unit can sustain combat before it “breaks”. An attacking unit will likely break when it sustains more than 25% casualties in an action. This will make it unfit for further attack for a period 48-hours. At a level of casualties of greater than 30% in a defending action, the formation will break and be unable to stop further enemy attacks for at least 24-hours.”

The above casualty percentiles are keyed to division level formations – i.e. high ratio of tail to teeth troops. He goes on to indicate that battalion level formations might sustain casualty rates as much as 20% greater than a division level formation before the unit becomes relatively ineffective in either attack or defense. Maneuver battalions invariably being almost all teeth and no tail. For ToW purposes I think the battalion level rates are more appropriate considering the scale of the game. Moreover your 40 to 50% casualty rate at which a unit become combat ineffective looks pretty reasonable.

I suppose ideally one would apply some level of randomization and vary the rate at which a unit cracks. For example, perhaps a unit that has suffered 25% casualties has a 20% (or whatever) probability of becoming combat ineffective (scenario ends). A unit that has suffered 50% casualties has an 80% (or whatever) probability of becoming combat ineffective (scenario ends).

Best Regards

Jeff

[ May 20, 2007, 07:57 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]

[Oudy]

I guess the issue that is the most puzzling is does the casualty rate at which an overall attack is called off scale down to the size of the actions in TOW. Take for example if you have three squads totaling 30 men; 40% would be 12 men. Would this allow for a challenging scenario? Or, would you have to scale up the enemy numbers to take into account the casualty rate, at which point you may end up with battles too large for computers to handle.

I guess this is an issue I'll have to play with to see where the right balance lies.

Oudy

[ChrisND]

I think the issue lies in that players are programmed by their gaming experience to accept very high casualties, and not be very careful with their digital men.

In real life, 12 out of 30 men is a helluva lot, but it doesn't sound that bad in the cyber world.

[G.Mooyman]

Interesting. Would be nice to include this in every mission. While the player is doing their job there could be a submission running checking constantly for the casualties. Submission; if casualties higher than xx% than return to begin react point. If the point is reached the mission will end in a failure.

Though the victory condition still needs to be in place. Would be silly to retreat if theres like 1 enemy left.

Can you link a mission to the same map again? So the player can retry the map with fresh units, while the campaign keeps going on?

[Oudy]

Normal Dude

I guess the real trick is to fall somewhere between "real life" and gaming expectations. I'm not interested in playing every scenario "to the death." I've been trying to play balance a mission that I'm working on and it is a delicate balance.

It has been fun playing the enemy AI commander, trying to figure out how he would react to situations. Currently, he still beats me most of the time, probably because I'm too busy watching the show.

Oudy