Troops don't get tired too fast.

[Webwing]

I decided to do some tests regarding this since I’m doing a mission with infantry only and I wanted to know how big a map I would be able to do without having all the troops exhausted. Also the AI trigger to move from A to B is based on time so knowing how long it takes for the troops to move is crucial.

Only US troops tested for now.

The squads were all set to normal (not typical!), 0 and Fitness to “Fit”.

I don’t think Experience, Motivation, Leadership and Supply affect the performance.

Levels of Fitness in game: Rested, Ready, Tiring, Tired, Fatigued, Exhausted.

I made a 1km course and set 10 waypoints for all orders.

A riffle squad with “Quick” will take around 40 sec to run 100m and around 9min for 1km.

A scout squad is only 40 sec faster in 1km.

Both behave the same as far as levels of fitness goes.

Soon after starting they change from rested to ready.

After 500 they go to tiring. After 750m they are tired. And this is how they finish the 1km run.

It takes only from 2 to 3 min for them to be rested again.

With a “Fast” command things change a lot but you don’t gain much in terms of speed. They get tired after only 50 m, fatigued after 500m and exhausted after 800m. They start walking(Move) then.

The real killer is Slow. Put your men to crawl and they will be exhausted after 50m.

Once exhausted, if they stop, it takes about 1 min for them to go back to fatigued and 1 min more for each stage until they are rested again. All in all around 5min.

Terrain type does not seem to affect the Tiredness level at all. This seems a bit off.

Inclination of the terrain does.

I guess the level of stress during battle affects the performance as well but for my needs that was enough and I sent the troops home.

This might be of some use for others designing their missions or even to play the missions!!

[ November 29, 2007, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: Webwing ]

[thewood]

Great testing. That helps a lot.

[JohnO]

Originally posted by Webwing:

With a “Fast” command things change a lot but you don’t gain much in terms of speed. They get tired after only 50 m, fatigued after 500m and exhausted after 800m. They start walking(Move)

Thanks for the test this will be good information on my attempt on building a scenario with Infantry.

One question though, curious about it, is on the test using the "Fast" mode. After they were in the "Move" mode and after a certain time frame did they go back to "Fast" mode or just kept walking?

JohnO

[Webwing]

Originally posted by JohnO:

One question though, curious about it, is on the test using the "Fast" mode. After they were in the "Move" mode and after a certain time frame did they go back to "Fast" mode or just kept walking?

JohnO

They keep walking until the next waypoint. The order there was again FAST. So they started to run but since their state was still exhausted they went back to MOVE mode.

This must be fixed. I've seen many times enemy soldiers walking in the middle of the battle and now I know why. How come a soldier walking strait up in the middle of the battlefield? But since crawling is even more stressful they go to MOVE mode which is the less stressful. They should lay down and wait and even go to HIDE mode until they are rested.

Not sure if you can call this a bug but it sure must be fixed.

-

[JohnO]

Good point, as soon as I get home from work, will post this topic in the Skunkworks and see what kind of response I will get.

[JohnO]

Webwing and thewood, I have spreadsheets on test that was done and see if I can get it posted for you guys to use. If not I can post some information if I can't post the spreadsheets, ok. But the subject that your talking about has been brought up. I will look them over again tomorrow at work. The test was conducted over different terrain as well. Hell, I'm in the Skunkworks and I didn't know that they conducted a test already, it was done before I joined it. So bear with me and I will get the information for you.

JohnO

[Webwing]

Originally posted by JohnO:

Webwing and thewood, I have spreadsheets on test that was done and see if I can get it posted for you guys to use. If not I can post some information if I can't post the spreadsheets, ok. But the subject that your talking about has been brought up. I will look them over again tomorrow at work. The test was conducted over different terrain as well. Hell, I'm in the Skunkworks and I didn't know that they conducted a test already, it was done before I joined it. So bear with me and I will get the information for you.

JohnO

I'd love to know more about it and compare the results.

Mind you, the terrain thing I only tested with road and mud. I thought those were the 2 extremes.

--

[MiB]

My one major question is why crawling exhausts troops so quickly.

At the very least I'd like a rationale behind it.

[Webwing]

Originally posted by MiB:

My one major question is why crawling exhausts troops so quickly.

At the very least I'd like a rationale behind it.

I don't think the game is too far off. It must be exhausting to crawl with all that equipment.

The only problem I see is that most scenarios the only way for infantry not to get shot is to crawl. Then you crawl from one building to the next just to get there and be exhausted and unable to fight.

Maybe 100m before exhaustion could do for better gameplay?

--

[JohnO]

Webwing, I haven't forgotten about your test results, just waiting on BFC to say I can release the spreadsheets on the test results. It may not get release due to the NDA and their trying to get v105 out the door as soon as possible trust me they want it out to the players as fast as they can.

[bigmac1281]

Now, I'm no soldier. Never have been. Probably never will be. But at my job I do a lot of crawling, every day. I spend at least half of the day on my belly. Granted, I don't have nearly as much equipment as these soldiers haul around, but I do crawl a LOT.

On a scale from "rested" to "exhausted", I'd say I only ever get to the "tired" state.

Now maybe with the equipment that they carry, they might get to the exhausted state, I don't know. But how about a compromise?

Why not have it so that when you break off an assault team, the assault team can crawl and never go beyond "tired", or even "tiring"? The assault team would drop the heavy gear and take only ammo and their weapon, so they SHOULD be able to go longer than anyone else.

For the Syrians, since they can't break off into assault teams (at least I don't think they can, I don't play Syrian), they could be allowed to crawl and never go past "tired" as long as they have no heavy weapons (RPG's, machine guns) in the squad.

I agree, crawling is just about the only method of movement that gives you a very good chance of not being shot in game. It'd be very nice if we could do it, and not be absolutely useless once we reach the objective. I think we're penalized enough by the fact that it's so mind numbingly slow, the soldiers shouldn't be absolutely useless once they reach their objective as well.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Webwing]

JohnO,

There is no hurry. Don't worry. Whenever you get it will be fine.

And as for seeing any of this in 1.05 don't even bother with this. If it is taken into consideration for future patches I'm happy.

I was intrigued by the mud thing and tested it again.

I guess I was making a mud track the same as the road track and not enough mud to have an effect.

Found some interesting things though. In mud they go a lot slower.

As you can see in the picture they are 200m behind having started both teams at the same time.

What is curious is that they change their states of tiredness at the same point in time for every change. From ready to tiring, from tiring to tired etc. It seems to be linked to time more than anything here.

Another thing is this: Since 9 men squad will not run together on a road for instance, how is that calculated. I have my road squad running and only 5 men are on the road the other 4 on dirt(but it could be mud for instance). The level of tiredness is calculated per squad but how? An average between road and dirt?

Just curious.

[ November 30, 2007, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Webwing ]

[Webwing]

Originally posted by bigmac1281:

I think we're penalized enough by the fact that it's so mind numbingly slow, the soldiers shouldn't be absolutely useless once they reach their objective as well.

I agree. Maybe in a future patch they could tweak it.

--

['Card]

Low-crawling (which is what the infantry calls it) isn't that exhausting, even when you're combat loaded.

Well... let me clarify that. There are really two types of low-crawling. There's the normal "keeping my head down and being sneaky creeping along" low-crawling or "I'm going to flop down and scoot over to the edge of this building" low-crawling. Takes awhile to get anywhere (obviously) but physically it's not all that demanding. Fast low-crawling (as in "bullets are smacking into the ground around me and I have to get behind that building NOW") will flat-out exhaust your ass in a hurry.

[thewood]

That is actually part of the problem. There is no way to move slowly without exhausting your troops.

[bigmac1281]

Fast low-crawling (as in "bullets are smacking into the ground around me and I have to get behind that building NOW") will flat-out exhaust your ass in a hurry. [/QB]

I can agree with that 100%. But the thing is, the troops in the game never do the "fast" low crawl, but they always get exhausted like they are.

Maybe they should implement 2 crawling moves. 1 that's slow, and doesn't drain your fatigue past tiring, and 1 that's fast, that you can get exhausted, but you stay low and hard to hit.

[M1A1TC]

Your troops are given a "slow" command:

1. Under direct/indirect fire "fast low-crawl" to get to safety quick (TacAI), exausting

2. Without LOS/LOF to enemy, "regular low-crawl", tiring

[Cpl Steiner]

What really bugs me is that there is no way to match speed with a vehicle. There is currently no way to get a vehicle to move at the same speed as the troops around it. I think in the original CMx1 games, you could match infantry and vehicle speeds.

[thewood]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Your troops are given a "slow" command:

1. Under direct/indirect fire "fast low-crawl" to get to safety quick (TacAI), exausting

2. Without LOS/LOF to enemy, "regular low-crawl", tiring

I am not sure your point. Slow makes your troops exhausted either way.

[Splinty]

You guys haven't worn IBA in desert heat, just jogging half a block can be exhausting. Body armor is heavy,awkward, and it traps ALL the bodyheat your torso generates. As a soldier just back from Baghdad I can tell you the slow command acts just about right. At least as far as the fatigue factor is concerned.

[thewood]

I have no doubt that crawling makes you tired, just seems there should be something between crawling and strolling down the street.

[Webwing]

The FAST command I never use. QUICK is better and gets you where you want just as fast.

Between crawling and walking you have the HUNT command. But hm... not it.

The crawling issue is more a gameplay issue than a realism one, in my opinion. Since crawling is the only safe way to go from A to B without getting shot most of the time. Not sure what would be the ideal solution though.

---

[M1A1TC]

Originally posted by thewood:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Your troops are given a "slow" command:

1. Under direct/indirect fire "fast low-crawl" to get to safety quick (TacAI), exausting

2. Without LOS/LOF to enemy, "regular low-crawl", tiring

I am not sure your point. Slow makes your troops exhausted either way. </font>

[thewood]

I see, sorry

[MarkEzra]

Originally posted by Splinty:

You guys haven't worn IBA in desert heat, just jogging half a block can be exhausting. Body armor is heavy,awkward, and it traps ALL the bodyheat your torso generates. As a soldier just back from Baghdad I can tell you the slow command acts just about right. At least as far as the fatigue factor is concerned.

Thanks Splinty you just cleared up something I was wondering about. Syrian forces and especially UnComs should fair better when it comes to crawling...And Splinty...Glad your home and THANKS for your service!!