CMSF for Nat'l Guard Training

[gclfootball]

I was recently showing a buddy of mine CM:SF. He is Sgt. Major in our local National Guard. When I showed it to him, he thought it might be a good tool to use with his command staff to have them set up and simulate recon/assault at their computer facility. Basically, we would set up a scenario, the command staff would issue orders, which I would then input and have the results displayed on their wall monitor. Basically using it as a basic training tool which didn't require them to deploy to the field.

I had a couple of questions-

1) Has Battlefront taken any position on this kind of usage?

2) Has anyone else done this sort of thing?

3) Any other issues I would be aware of?

Thanks for any input or advice

[Battlefront.com]

There are a number of instances of Combat Mission (of all flavors, going back to 2000) being used for official and unofficial training. Recently, with CM:SF, this has been true as well. To answer your questions:

1) We're more than happy to have CM:SF used for training purposes, either officially or unofficially.

2) Yes. Currently there is limited use of CM:SF in the Army's Command And General Staff College (CGSC). It's been evaluated for use in other capacities as well. The problem always is...

3) Usually the people that recognize the value of a training tool are not the people who decided if it gets used for that purpose. This is the #1 problem for all products being evaluated for possible military use, not just CM. When it does start to move up the chain of command, things take longer than they should. Since this is basically a personality/rank driven thing, time is always against the product because by the time someone gets up to a position of authority he is generally almost ready for retirement or reassignment. Once that happens everything gets reset to zero, or just about.

Another problem is that the military has very tough requirements for evaluating applicability for a given product to a given task. The less the product fits the desired end result "out of the box", the more trouble it runs into. In CM:SF's case there are a number of things the military wants to see in it that we simply aren't interested in putting in unless the military pays us to do so. This gets us into a chicken and egg situation. If we were naive enough to think that "if we build it they will come" we'd likely invest in the things the military requires for large scale classroom use. But we don't, so we won't We have had some nibbles from existing defense contractors to get in through their existing programs, but those have not gone anywhere for similar reasons. They don't want to take a risk on something that likely won't get purchased any more than we do.

Now, having said all of this I will caveat my comments. Small units have flexibility and some amount of petty cash at their disposal. Getting a couple of copies of CM:SF to run on their own personal, or government, computers is not out of the question. It still takes someone making a case for it in order to get the funds and time allocated, but the hurdles for limited use are fairly low and the decision time short.

I hope that helps!

Steve

[Fenix]

3) Usually the people that recognize the value of a training tool are not the people who decided if it gets used for that purpose. This is the #1 problem for all products being evaluated for possible military use, not just CM.

Heh, agreed! A friend of mine who works in the Army told me that once they made some kind of official "drills" using a PC game... You wouldn't guess in a thousand years what game they used... Call of Duty 4!!! xDDD

Quoting one of the best lines of the CMSF Game Manual:

"[...]Anybody that has ever server in the military, or studied it in historical texts, knows that some people should never have been put in charge of anything except washing dishes (and you don't necessarily want to be the one eating from those dishes)[...]"

[Battlefront.com]

Heh... I forgot all about that quote. It's a good one (pats self on back)

Steve

[gclfootball]

Thanks for the feedback Steve- this would purely be a casual thing where I would be assisting our guys in uniform with something other than the old routine for training purposes.

[Huntarr]

So when does the dishwasher module come out exactly, I know just the a$$hat that could write a "review" on it.

[Splinty]

I have used CMBO to train my old platoon on the layout of our signal site. I used jeeps for Hummers and 2 1/2 ton trucks for our signal vans. Worked out pretty well for us. My platoon leader played CMBB as a tactics/mindset trainer.

[theFightingSeabee]

As someone who taught some military classes, including Seabee Tactics, I think this would definitely be useful for training. Most of my classroom training involved an instructor going over a handout that had been xeroxed 42,000 times. Some of these handouts had drawings of ww2 guys digging foxholes and things like that. Many times the quality was so bad, you could barely read it or see the drawings. If we were lucky, we'd get a room with a white board or a powerpoint presentation.

Most military guys are avid gamers (nothing much else to do when you're stuck in some barracks room somewhere) who grew up around video games, so I think they would pick CMSF up quickly.

It would also be a great visual tool. More interesting visuals means less students falling asleep. It would help people like me who are more visual oriented to learn basic tactics.

Specific terrain and situations could be easily simulated.

Problems:

The military would, no doubt, want their own customized versions (the Seabees would need Seabee units, etc.). This would delay our future mods and patches! Screw that! I guess I'd wait for the sake of my country. Beyond that, I don't really see many negatives.

I really do like gclfootball's explanation of how he would do it. I would hand out maps and give coordinates. They would have to do every thing as they would in the field. Then the instructor would input the orders into cmsf. Then they would all learn lessons by watching the action unfold. Great idea!

[Battlefront.com]

You Seabees always get the best the Navy has to offer, don't you? And to think the Marines complain about their position in the pecking order

As for the complications of training... CM:SF, out of the box, is a good "mindset trainer" at the very least. Sure, it doesn't have 2 dozen features that we've been asked to put in by military trainers, but it's available now and the entry cost is very small. Compare this to the simulations available to platoons and companies for combined arms training... exactly That's the maddening thing about the military in situations like this. They are still resistant to COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) solutions that do 85% of what they need done, even though the COTS solution is here today and the stuff on the drawing board is likely to never materialize. And if it ever does get built it appears years late, only satisfies 75% of the stated requirements, and costs twice what budgeted for (and 10000 times more than the COTS solution).

Grrr...

CM:SF could be modified very easily to do more specialized and for peanuts (compared to Beltway Bandit products). At least in terms of units and textures. Other features would take more time and money. The good thing is that if they ponied up the money we could subcontract most of the work so it wouldn't impact our commercial schedule. Oh, and don't worry about the commercial stuff getting pushed aside for the military. Unless they're willing to pay Beltway Bandit prices for us to drop our commercial line for even 6 months, forget about it. It's simply not worth it to us.

Now, what you guys REALLY want is for the military to contract with us to deliver the following "mission critical" features they've asked us for:

1. CoPlay with perhaps 12 players per side.

2. Neutral "umpire" who can control various aspects of the sim as it is playing out, though mostly in an observer role.

3. More than 2 sides (for example, Civilians or completely separate OPFOR/BLUEFOR).

4. Full game playback.

5. Very detailed AARs.

6. 2D map overlay with NATO standard icons and planning tools.

These are all features that we think you guys would flip out over, right? With the funding we could afford to contract the work out and therefore have only a minor hit to our commercial calendar (Charles would have to do a lot of work for this, no matter what). The critical thing here is that some of these features would appeal to almost all wargamers, so it would be worth the hit to the schedule.

So start bugging your elected officials to get us a contract

Steve

[Bigduke6]

When I was in I used paper wargames as training tools and I'm sure that on a company level and lower CMSF could do the same thing today. That said, as a trainer I found I had to do a goodly amount of "GMing", as there were soldiers and officers in the classroom frankly lacking the imagination to participate in a wargame, which by definition takes some suspension of disbelief.

I also found that, when the army used computers or its similar wargames to train me and my fellow officers, the gaming to me - wargame-literate that I was, was primitive and predictable. There was this computer-driven exercise they would run annually and I got a reputation as tactically smart just because I remembered where the OPFOR set up from year to year, the trainers never varied the OPFOR tactics.

I think the problem of using CMSF today in any kind of widespread way has alot to do with the military's need for a training tool to be geared towards the LCM. So if even 10 per cent of the force can't use it because they can't make the leap to use a wargame, it's no good for every one.

I were a company commander today I'd be using the heck out of CMSF - although I would personally be a bit worried about the lessons it would be teaching my guys about area and artillery fire effect. But even then it would be a terrific way to show the boys combined arms tactics and make them think terrain and enemy.

[hoolaman]

I were a company commander today I'd be using the heck out of CMSF - although I would personally be a bit worried about the lessons it would be teaching my guys about area and artillery fire effect.

Care to elaborate?

[Bigduke6]

I just mean that if I had the job of US combat company commander, I would probably try and use CMSF as a training tool, as I think it would be a good one.

If you mean the artillery/area effect line, what I mean by that is that I think CMSF makes direct area fire and artillery fire too effective, mostly because it doesn't seem to take into account people hide from stuff like that. I've seen veteran squads get creamed from a single ground burst 200 meters distant - to my mind that's not realistic, a veteran squad would take cover.

Right now I'm in a battle were I've got squads on the second floor of a concrete building, hiding, and they're getting shot to ribbons by MMG fire about 250 meters distant. I can see pinning and supression, but racking up casualties against guys actively hiding and so logically taking cover inside a building to me is a bit overmuch.

My feeling is that if you are trying to get away from frag and MMG fire and you have an exterior and an interior wall, or more, inbetween you and the fire, if you lie down and make yourself small you have a pretty fair chance of coming out unscathed.

That's a personal opinion of some dispute and obvious Steve and the guys don't agree with it. But if I were training an infantry company that I commanded, I would go with my opinion on this particular point and not BFI's.

That said, I would for sure use CMSF if I could, my disagreement is a niggle. Overall I would say it represents small-scale combat and the tactics that go with it very well, certainly better than anything available on the civilian market, and I am willing to bet better than anything the military has as well.

[meade95]

Right now I'm in a battle were I've got squads on the second floor of a concrete building, hiding, and they're getting shot to ribbons by MMG fire about 250 meters distant. I can see pinning and supression, but racking up casualties against guys actively hiding and so logically taking cover inside a building to me is a bit overmuch.

My feeling is that if you are trying to get away from frag and MMG fire and you have an exterior and an interior wall, or more, inbetween you and the fire, if you lie down and make yourself small you have a pretty fair chance of coming out unscathed.

+1 - I'm with you on this as well -

At the same time, I also think the accuracy (small arms weapons accuracy) ratings for elite / crack U.S. soliders needs to be tweaked "up".......

[dischord]

I'm pretty sure the argument was that "realistic" casualty rates would take too long to complete a match.

May I propose that in the next game(s) the "Iron" level of play provides "realistic" cause-effect w/regard to casualties/KIA.

[theFightingSeabee]

I'd still like more than 2 hours.

[Splinty]

One other thing I think the military would require is a "logistics module". Probably 75% of most battalion and brigade level training is focused on moving the beans and bullets forward and getting shot up soldiers and their damaged vehicles back.

[LongLeftFlank]

I can see pinning and supression, but racking up casualties against guys actively hiding and so logically taking cover inside a building to me is a bit overmuch.

My feeling is that if you are trying to get away from frag and MMG fire and you have an exterior and an interior wall, or more, inbetween you and the fire, if you lie down and make yourself small you have a pretty fair chance of coming out unscathed.

+2, and the single biggest remaining design problem with this game IMHO (my other issues are "wishlist" stuff). JasonC talked about this a while back -- in the real world, lethality of infantry fire is at max in the first couple secs, then drops off rapidly to nearly zero as men seek cover. To keep killing them, your firers either need to get to a new angle or bring up new firers. In the game this doesn't happen. You just sit there and pull triggers until the enemy is dead, kills you first or flees their position entirely.