Small Arms ammunition sharing...a idea !

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, as I mentioned earlier we did not foresee the importance of in-game ammo resupply to the extent it is being used in reality. As a reminder we didn't foresee the need for 4 hour time limits on games either, but we did add that since it was requested and not difficult to add.

I do agree that the Red forces have serious restrictions on ammo resupply. I also agree that they are, in some ways, penalized more than they are in real life by their inability to split Squads. But I'm still not sure that, on balance, there's a better way to simulate them. The truth is that they DO operate as solid units in practice and have very limited tactical flexibility. The sorts of things people could and would do with them, once split up, would make combat extremely unrealistic overall.

The problem with allowing Red Squads to be split up there's limited options for us to penalize such things. In CMx1 we made Morale very brittle, which wasn't all that great a work around. For CMx2... man, I dunno what we could do. Sure, the C2 modeling automatically takes care of the Absolute Spotting problem that CMx1 had when you split units up all over the place. So yeah, that's a major unrealistic advantage that CMx1 gave that is not a problem for CMx2. Or at least not as much because as a player you can get more intel then you probably should for a given situation.

The solutions I can think of, that would best mimic reality, are too difficult to implement. In short, this would be the inability for the split pieces to be far apart from each other *and* still have complete freedom of action. For example, you could tell a 2 man detachment to run back to the BTR and get ammo, but that is *all* it could do. It couldn't get half way back and then decide to rush over to a little hill and take a peek because it's the closest unit the player has to double check on a suspicion of enemy motion. Likewise, a 2 man RPG detachment positioned on the right flank as an AT "picket" couldn't do a 200m cat-and-mouse stalking of an enemy tank lurking around in a village.

Again, there's just no way we can impose such realistic restrictions on tactical employment without massive effort. Even then it will probably wind up being quite clunky

Steve

[Pvt. Ryan]

How about having the ammo come to them instead of the squads going to get it? If you enable ammo sharing the crews of the vehicles could bring the ammo to the men that need it.

[hcrof]

Heres a novel Idea - Make syrian squads occupy 3 action spots instead of 2! The 3rd action spot could be 2-3 riflemen who when split off from the main squad would be almost entirely useless from a combat point of view but could act as MOUT spotters/ammo bearers if needed. As they have no binoculars they would not be great at spotting things anyway at the ranges on the modern battlefield (Outside of a city). Obviously if they had a bad morale hit when out of LOS from the Squad leader it would make sense - If they come under fire they would cower or disapear. Im sure that is realistic - send some conscripts to get ammo in a tight spot and you can never be too sure if they will come back!

The other advantage of 3 action spots is that they will not bunch up so much in defense, Win-Win!

[Mord]

I always liked the idea of ammo dumps for Red, especially for the Fighters and Combatants. Be a great feature and tactically viable for both forces. But I remember Steve shooting down the idea way back when.

Mord.

[YankeeDog]

Heres a novel Idea - Make syrian squads occupy 3 action spots instead of 2! The 3rd action spot could be 2-3 riflemen who when split off from the main squad would be almost entirely useless from a combat point of view but could act as MOUT spotters/ammo bearers if needed. As they have no binoculars they would not be great at spotting things anyway at the ranges on the modern battlefield (Outside of a city). Obviously if they had a bad morale hit when out of LOS from the Squad leader it would make sense - If they come under fire they would cower or disapear. Im sure that is realistic - send some conscripts to get ammo in a tight spot and you can never be too sure if they will come back!

The other advantage of 3 action spots is that they will not bunch up so much in defense, Win-Win!

I think these are great ideas. If the capability to split Syrian squads were added, I think having Syrian split teams other than the team with the Squad Leader have a very high chance of "disappearing" (i.e., routing) if they come under any significant amount of fire while out of C&C of the Squad Leader would be entirely realistic and a wonderfully frustrating game feature. It seems to me that this would also eliminate most (though admittedly not all) of the incentive to use them in a gamey or unrealistic way -- there would be a very high chance of losing the team entirely if you put them at any kind of risk.

I think if you added the restriction that the player could not use the manual TARGET or COVER ARC commands for split teams out of C&C with their Squad Leader, things get even better -- this would make it harder to unrealistically use Red split teams offensively, such as Steve's example of sending a couple of privates off to stalk a tank with an RPG-7. This sort of thing shouldn't work very well with troops at the lower end of the training/experience spectrum.

[Alan8325]

How about tying squad-split options to unit experience? For example, conscript and green can't split, regular can do a simple one like AT detachment, and veteran and up can do all possibilities (assault order w/ bounding overwatch, assault team, split team, etc.). Special forces and Airborne could retain all squad split options for all experience levels.

[Lanzfeld]

How about having the ammo come to them instead of the squads going to get it? If you enable ammo sharing the crews of the vehicles could bring the ammo to the men that need it.

^^^+1 to this^^^

[Wengart]

It would be nice if every squad could split off a 1-2 man ammunition team to retrieve ammo. No matter what nationality, and simply give the two man team horrible modifiers so they can't be used in combat.

[JonS]

... simply give the two man team horrible modifiers so they can't be used in combat.

Apart from it possibly being non-trivial to give a seperated unit modifiers which are different to it's parent*, they WILL be used in combat. For instance, you could split off the 2 man ammo bearers from multiple squads and post them forward as a picket line. They'll die, for sure, but in dying they'll provide information about which way the enemy is moving (and which way they *aren't* moving) as well as possibly disrupting the enemys approach as they deploy to attack the picket line, rather than the MLR some distance behind it.

Now, you could argue that units *should* be able to split off these kinds of sentries/pickets, and that's an argument I have some sympathy for, but arguing that ammo bearers won't be ab/used is wrong-headed.

Jon

* plus the additional UI required, plus some heuristics about how many times a unit can peel off ammo bearers, plus tracking of ammo bearers in play, plus changes to other spliting functionality while the ammo bearers are away.

[Wengart]

Ah. your quite right I was only thinking of them being used as impromptu AT teams.

Perhaps having an ammo acquiring range, which would allow a squad to acquire ammo from a vehicle if they were in 20? meters.

[JonS]

Perhaps having an ammo acquiring range, which would allow a squad to acquire ammo from a vehicle if they were in 20? meters.

Wen,

FWIW, I *like* that units have to go to a specific point, then go *into* the vehicle there, and the player must specifically detail what ammo the unit is to acquire. I like the friction inefficiency it introduces.

A lot of the suggestions here, including your one above that has the appearance of teleporting ammo from inside the vehicle straight into the soldier's ammo pouches, are of little interest to me because they seek to minimise or eliminate that friction and inefficiency.

Disclosure: I invariably play WEGO, so I don't mind fiddling about with units inside the wagons. OTOH, I *also* don't mind that it sometimes takes me 3 - and always at least 2 - turns to retreive ammo from a wagon.

Regards

Jon

[Pandur]

But I'm still not sure that, on balance, there's a better way to simulate them.

did you though about allowing them "only" the split team command? NO assault team and NO AT team... ?

It couldn't get half way back and then decide to rush over to a little hill and take a peek because it's the closest unit the player has to double check on a suspicion of enemy motion. Likewise, a 2 man RPG detachment positioned on the right flank as an AT "picket" couldn't do a 200m cat-and-mouse stalking of an enemy tank lurking around in a village.

i know where you are comming from but when you look at it the other way round, is it more convinient to make a cat and mouse stalking game with a 2 man RPG team and 7 others glued to their back wich cant stop to follow them for some reason? i mean players do it anyways, so wouldnt it be better to take the more "natural" way to do it instead of sending 2+7 guys?

yes players will get around to use this in a exteme way, but there is allways the limit of the force itself. i mean a split squad of green syrians, what harm can they do? almost none in average...i play red a lot and if you spit to close to a "full" green squad you have a good chance they run away.

what i want to say is that the red players will get verry fast that if they send a AT team for example somewhere far away just because whatever reason, they end up killed more often then not i would imagine. wich leaves this squad without "any" AT means, wich is a seriouse penalty paid allready.

so what we miss the most is tactical mobilety within the area the squad is positioned in.

what you said about "chaining" the split squads together in a way they can act independent but cant move away from each other further then XX meters, would be great but as you said impossible, unfortunately.

well thats why i thought only "split squad" command should be allowed. so you cant form 2 man AT hunter teams with every squad but have a bigger tactical mobilety and suddenly ony 2 more guys stuck to the RPG team wich in turn can come in handy as medics in case they survive.

so, in the end its verry well possible that there are things to consider i didnt even thought about, but well heres what i think about it

[Lanzfeld]

The 'harm" they could do is act as eyes on a flank or spoil a suprise attack or trigger an ambush because players would send them ahead or scout with them. Like Steve said, the Red side doesnt do this by splitting squads. Not in thier doctrine. They dont have to fight well to be used the wrong way.

[Pandur]

no i dont think so, yes players would try to but it seems youre not playing too much red side. splitting off half squads and makeing your allready weak platoon even weaker by sending half of it all over the place is exactly pointless. as we all know, if you are everywhere your are nowhere at the same time.

so i think the extreme form of splitting squads and sending them all over the place wont happen as red is mince meat that way.

they loose C2 and thier support if they venture too far, and a 4/5 man green/regular split squad cant fight blue on its own that way. that puts a natural limitation on it.

and when i think about the penaltys they get for sticking to their doctrine in such a extreme way they do here in the game, i rather have em be able to split.

that way the result will be less artificial and more belivable i think.

and speaking of doctrine, i sure think that you can stretch blue doctrines to the maximum with blue split squads and pull off some weird actions with thier skill(i think about my javelin "bases" hundrets of meters or sometimes over one or more kilometers away from their squads). this brings me to...

They dont have to fight well to be used the wrong way.

in my thinking they absolutelyl have to fight well to be used wrong deliberately. i mean if you got a plan that is nuts with split squads all over the map, you need good "blue" man to pull it off? dont you?

if one uses split squads wrong by accident, it cant be helped anyways.

well my way of thinking about this.

[Lanzfeld]

But what about triggering a blue ambush by splitting your red squad and sending the fodder ahead? Who cares if they die because they will reveal the ambush.

Now I will agree that this is a true to life tactic but not for these red troops. (Syria).

Also, if you split off a 2 man squad to cover an approach then, again, who cares if they die because the very fact that they died told you blue is comming that way.

You may have honor and say you would never do gamey things but I can tell you others will.

[hcrof]

But what about triggering a blue ambush by splitting your red squad and sending the fodder ahead? Who cares if they die because they will reveal the ambush.

Now I will agree that this is a true to life tactic but not for these red troops. (Syria).

Also, if you split off a 2 man squad to cover an approach then, again, who cares if they die because the very fact that they died told you blue is comming that way.

You may have honor and say you would never do gamey things but I can tell you others will.

Firstly, how often does blue do ambushes? Anyway, a well concealed marksman or fireteam would be able to pin down or destroy the 2 man team without revealing its position.

Secondly, in defense red should deploy pickets to watch approaches, as long as they are close to the rest of the platoon. They arn't stupid and won't just ignore an approach just because some imagined and arbitrary 'Doctrine' tells them to.

[YankeeDog]

But what about triggering a blue ambush by splitting your red squad and sending the fodder ahead? Who cares if they die because they will reveal the ambush.

Now I will agree that this is a true to life tactic but not for these red troops. (Syria).

Also, if you split off a 2 man squad to cover an approach then, again, who cares if they die because the very fact that they died told you blue is comming that way.

You may have honor and say you would never do gamey things but I can tell you others will.

What makes you think this tactic is unrealistic for Syrians? "Sending the fodder ahead" is a time-tested infantry tactic that continues to be used by even highly trained western armies (albeit with a higher level of refinement). No army with any modicum of training sends an entire squad across an open area possibly covered by enemy fire all at once.

In any event, it's of marginal use. Blue's weaponry has such a range advantage, and a 2-man Red scout team would be so poor at spotting, that more often than not, a 2-man Red scout team would simply get routed and/or cut down by the initial burst of automatic weapons fire. All the Red player would learn for the sacrifice would be that there was Blue infantry somewhere within 200 meters or so of where his scout team got gunned down. Not a heck of a lot of info for the sacrifice.

[Lanzfeld]

Again...

Ambush triggered.

Also...I do know that this tactic is used IRL . Steve has told us the reason behind not splitting Red and I was just repeating it. Battlefront has done the homework. Who knows...maybe they will change it.

My Blue ambushes all the time. I make little battles where Blue is quite outnumbered.

[YankeeDog]

Again...

Ambush triggered.

Not if the ambush is set up correctly. Any good defensive MLR should be set up with preliminary resistance points to deal with enemy scouts and probing effort.

IOW, if you have to reveal your main ambush elements to eliminate a couple of privates stumbling down the street, you haven't set things up properly, and you deserve to have your trap sprung prematurely. Never put all your eggs in one basket.

Similar deal goes for a good attack strategy; if you have to reveal your main attack effort to deal with enemy OPs and pickets, then you aren't following proper attack tactics -- A good attack should have lead elements to reveal and deal with enemy OPs before they spot and interfere with the main effort.

[Pvt. Ryan]

Use the vehicle crews. No splitting is necessary, no new AI programming, and they already exist, so if people aren't using them for gamey purposes now then it won't be a concern, especially since they risk having a useless vehicle if they doom their crews to martyrdom. Of course, if using them this way is too unrealistic, I understand that you wouldn't allow it. Then again, if you do enable ammo sharing, what's to stop us?