NATO Module - Canadian ORBATS

[RecceDG]

I bought the NATO module and I was delighted to see the inclusion of Canadian units into the game.

That delight has been somewhat tempered by the odd ORBATs (TO&E for Americans) of some of the units.

This isn't strictly surprising - one of the nice things about Canadian doctrinal standards is that there's so many to choose from, and almost none of them actually match the reality on the ground.

Some of the ORBATs have clearly been taken from publications (like the Ground Manoeuvre Reconnaissance Manual) where the ORBAT contained within was never actually adopted. Others... well, I can't say where the information was sourced, but it ain't right.

I wish there was some way to edit ORBATs/TO&E in-game, but int he meantime, here are some suggested corrections:

1. Tank Squadron: This is missing the dozer tank and the Battle Captain. The BC is effectively the Squadron XO (the actual command relationship is a little more complex, but because the A1, A2, and B echelons aren't being modeled in game, we can call him the XO) The dozer tank is the OC's "wingman".

So the SHQ element should be OC, BC (XO), Dozer. OC and BC should be Leo2, Dozer should be Leo2 or Leo1C2. BC gets "XO" command capabilities (if the OC is killed he assumes command of the Sqn) the dozer tank reports to the OC.

Strictly speaking, all the Charlie tanks in the Sqn (currently all Leo1C2) should have mine plows on them, but given that minefield breaching isn't supported in-game that's not really a big deal.

Ranks - the Sqn OC is a Major, the BC/XO is a Captain, Troop Leaders or Lt or Captains

2. Recce Sqn: Armoured Recce Sqns have a similar layout to the Infantry Recce units, and according to the GMR they are identical. That isn't the case on the ground - Armoured Recce doesn't have snipers. Plus all the Coyote-based units lack the ability to dismount the GIB (Guy In Back, AKA the "observer" or "trunk monkey")

So changes:

a. To each Coyote, add a dismount-able passenger "Recce Team" consisting of one or two (one is more correct but two may make more sense from a game perspective) soldiers armed with C7 or C8.

b. Each Coyote operates as part of a two-car Patrol (this is currently properly replicated, much to my surprise and delight) but this includes the Troop Leader as well - he gets a wingman car too. So a Troop is 8 Coyotes, each with a dismount team. The G Coyote reports to the Tp Ldr, as does A, C, and E. B reports to A, D reports to C, and F reports to E. Tp Ldr is a Lt or Capt, A is a Warrant Officer, C and E are Sgts, B, D, F, and G are Master Corporals. Each dismount team is a Cpl.

c. All Recce units, but particularly the dismounts, should get a spotting bonus, to reflect the increased training on spotting and observation. In particular, it is common for a two-car patrol to have an Observation Post task where the vehicles are parked in a hidden location and the observers man a dismounted OP a short distance away.

d. Each patrol (save the Tp Ldr's) is supposed to have one Coyote equipped with the sensor package (a doppler radar, an thermal camera, and a TV camera) that can either be raised on a mast or deployed on a tripod. If the intent is not to simulate this in game, it can be replicated by further increasing the spot percent of the dismounts

e. The "light recce Sqn" is exactly the same as the Coyote Sqn, but equipped with GWagon C6. Happlily, the GWagon troops already have the dismount teams, the sole change is to ensure that the G callsign is a GWagon C6, isn't a sniper, and reports to the Tp Ldr

f. The Sqn has 3 Troops, plus the OC. Unlike the Tank Sqn, the BC in a Recce Sqn doesn't have a Coyote or GWagon and he wouldn't be on-map; he is with the CP and is a few bounds back.

3. The basic Canadian building-block conventional warfare unit is an ad-hoc grouping called a "square combat team". These are assembled out of larger Battle Groups (themselves ad-hoc groupings), and are not permanent assignments. They are, however, PERFECT for CM-SF as they get you a nice combined-arms manouvre unit that is doctrinally correct.

This looks like:

a. A Tank Sqn,

b. A Mech Infantry Coy,

c. An artillery FOO party, plus guns in support, and

d. An engineer Field Section (platoon)

The commander of the Combat Team can either be the Tank OC or the Infantry Coy OC. Who is in charge depends on the mission and the personalities involved, but for game purposes it is best if the Coy OC is the ultimate commander.

A Combat Team would normally be operating hand-in-glove with a Recce unit - either a Patrol or a full Troop. There would not necessarily be a command relationship between the Recce and the Cbt Tm, but the Recce would be working in support, so it would be OK to fudge the command relationship for game purposes and add a Recce Tp (8 x Coyote) to the Combat Team

That's enough for now... there's some Weird Harolds on the Infantry and Engineer units as well, but I'm less authoritative on them so I don't want to get too far out of my lane there.

DG

[Sequoia]

DG- Here is a thread that may interest you. You and the Capt. need to get together.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=93556

[The_Capt]

Hey DG,

To answer your first question, I got the ORBATs from the CTC Doctrine guys in Gagetown. The BFC guys had to adapt that somewhat to allow it to fit the CMSF engine and take into account stuff like game balance.

Add to this the real challenge of what would we actually send to war in 2008 (and here we are talking about a symetrical steel-on-steel fight) with the fact that every Regt does things a little differently and we have a real habit of ignoring doctrine...well you already know that.

I will bow to your Recce knowledge...not my area beyond a passing knowledge of how you guys operate.

I can send you the source stuff if you like

[RecceDG]

Yeah, I definitely caught a whiff of the GMR in the game ORBAT. Sadly, that bit of doctrine was never fully realized and was subsequently overtaken by events.

And to be honest, there's more than a little bit of the "good idea fairy" in that document.

The lack of the square combat team is a little more surprising. The SCT is the cornerstone of ATOC and (shocking!) the Combat Team Commander's course, both run under the auspices of the Tactics School in CTC. The Tactics School owns everything combined arms.

Having read the other thread, I'm not going to stick my nose into the infantry stuff. I know what G Coy deployed with on ROTO 6 (2 LAV III Pl, 1 RG31 Pl) but that's hardly the template by which to base everything on. (And I thought the Carl G was carried in the Pl weapon's section with the C6... whatever. Not My Lane)

But Armour, that I know, and it is currently not exactly right.

I'll do up a slide sometime in the next little while and show the changes graphically.

DG

[Battlefront.com]

All I have to say is I wish you Canucks could get your house in order and come up with something clear and simple for people like me to read! Seems nobody can fully agree on what a Canadian force in Syria c. 2007/2008 would have looked like because there was no consensus within the Army at the time. Very frustrating for me, I have got to say! Not as frustrating as having $1 USD = $1 CDN when I go on vacation to Quebec... but I digress

I can probably implement some of the change requests. One specific question I have right now is about the Armour's Battle Captain. I thought this tank stayed back with the trains and didn't go into action with the rest of the force except for special circumstances? I found an appalling lack of info on the Net to help me come to a definite conclusion so I would not be surprised to hear this is wrong.

The ORBATs in CM:SF are inflexible, that is true and is definitely at the root of many of the issues listed above. Or at least players could change things around to suit their own personal take on how things would be organized if the functionality existed. This is mostly fixed for CM: Normandy and will be gradually improved over time. When CM:SF 2 comes out the system will be at least what Normandy has, most likely better.

[Tactical Wargamer]

Not as frustrating as having $1 USD = $1 CDN when I go on vacation to Quebec... but I digress

Finally we are not considered the Northern Peso anymore Remeber in what 2002 it was $1 USD = 0.62 CDN !!!

Just keep buying our oil please! Beside are oil is better than Iran and Venezuela, not to mention we are basically cousins (well maybe not the Quebec chaps)......you guys just had something about taxes and King George.

[RecceDG]

You're not the first person to share this frustration. It makes us supremely flexible and confounds our enemies, but goddamn try and teach this ****.

There's a difference between a TANK Battle Captain and a RECCE Battle Captain. The RECCE BC stays with one of the CPs (there are two of them, on paper - they leapfrog or "step up" down the trace) and controls the battle from there. He's the voice on the radio flogging the troop leaders and acting as the information conduit back higher.

He should never ever ever be on the map in a CM-SF game, unless the scenario is a Sqn CP being overrun.

A TANK Battle Captain has his own tank and is part of the squadron's battle formation. He typically commands the firebase and can command half the Sqn if it makes tactical sense to divide the Sqn into two half-squadrons.

So imagine a square combat team. Tanks lead in Sqn box, Tps in line (ie each tank in a Tp is next to each other, and 1 and 2 Tp are line abrest and 3 and 4 are behind 1 and 2 - like two ranks of tanks with an 8-tank frontage. The OC and Dozer are with 1 and 2, the BC is with 3 and 4. The LAVs are back in an assembly area one or two bounds back.

The Sqn can roll as a box, or it can leapfrog half-sqns, with 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 alternating overwatch.

Let's say 1 & 2 make contact. They find fire positions near the point of contact, and the BC moves up to join them - that becomes the firebase. The OC and dozer fall back off the firebase position, collect up the rest of the Sqn, call the LAVs forward, and come up with a quick attack plan (typically left flanking, right flanking, or frontal) A start line is chosen, the OC's tanks (in this case, OC + dozer + 3 & 4 tps) shake out on the start line, the LAVs shake out behind them, and the attack goes in. All the while the firebase has been suppressing the contact (and the FOO usually joins the firebase because that spot has eyes on)

This happens very quickly and, done right, is near unstoppable.

That's the ATOC solution. Reality rarely plays out quite so neatly, and sometimes ground may dictate other choices (eg the OC might command the firebase and the BC the assault, the firebase might be only a single Tp with 2 Tps on the assault and one providing intimate support, there might be a minefield breach in which case each Tp gives up its plow tank to form a breaching team, yadda yadda)

Like I said, flexibility is key. Unlike Americans, Canadian doctrine is more a suggestion than Holy Writ.

Bottom line though:

1. Armd Sqn for game purposes:

1 Tp (4 tanks)

2 Tp (4 tanks)

3 Tp (4 tanks)

4 Tp (4 tanks)

OC's Tac (2 tanks)

BC (1 tank)

for a total of 19 tanks.

2. Recce Tp for game purposes:

Tp Ldr (2 cars + 2 dismount teams)

A Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams)

C Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams)

E Ptl (2 cars + 2 dismount teams)

"car" means Coyote or GWagon C6, but NOT MIXED!

3. Recce Sqn for game purposes:

OC's Tac (LAVIII)

LO (Coyote) *not super necessary

1 Tp

2 Tp

3 Tp

Assault Tp (4 x M113 or Bison with a section of pioneers in it)* kicking it old school.

DG

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks for the follow up info. It's too late to make changes for v1.31 because it's been finalized, however there probably will be a v1.32 at some point and I can get some tweaks in then.

OK, so it seems Armour's Battle Captain behaves identically to the US Army's Armored Company XO. The concepts behind it appear to be the same and so that makes sense to me.

In general it is difficult to sort out who usually stays up front and who usually stays back. Sometimes it is clear, other times it is not. One of the prime challenges I faced making the TO&E was keeping track of the minor doctrinal differences for three unfamiliar (and under documented) national forces PLUS internal variations all concurrently. The difficulty was so great that it is unlikely that we'll ever attempt to do three nations at one time again. Gamers tend to underestimate how much effort goes into TO&E, but after spending literally several MONTHS doing nothing but TO&E for NATO I can tell you that I don't

Steve

[akd]

All I have to say is I wish you Canucks could get your house in order and come up with something clear and simple for people like me to read! Seems nobody can fully agree on what a Canadian force in Syria c. 2007/2008 would have looked like because there was no consensus within the Army at the time. Very frustrating for me, I have got to say! Not as frustrating as having $1 USD = $1 CDN when I go on vacation to Quebec... but I digress

I can probably implement some of the change requests. One specific question I have right now is about the Armour's Battle Captain. I thought this tank stayed back with the trains and didn't go into action with the rest of the force except for special circumstances? I found an appalling lack of info on the Net to help me come to a definite conclusion so I would not be surprised to hear this is wrong.

The ORBATs in CM:SF are inflexible, that is true and is definitely at the root of many of the issues listed above. Or at least players could change things around to suit their own personal take on how things would be organized if the functionality existed. This is mostly fixed for CM: Normandy and will be gradually improved over time. When CM:SF 2 comes out the system will be at least what Normandy has, most likely better.

Thanks for the follow up info. It's too late to make changes for v1.31 because it's been finalized, however there probably will be a v1.32 at some point and I can get some tweaks in then.

OK, so it seems Armour's Battle Captain behaves identically to the US Army's Armored Company XO. The concepts behind it appear to be the same and so that makes sense to me.

In general it is difficult to sort out who usually stays up front and who usually stays back. Sometimes it is clear, other times it is not. One of the prime challenges I faced making the TO&E was keeping track of the minor doctrinal differences for three unfamiliar (and under documented) national forces PLUS internal variations all concurrently. The difficulty was so great that it is unlikely that we'll ever attempt to do three nations at one time again. Gamers tend to underestimate how much effort goes into TO&E, but after spending literally several MONTHS doing nothing but TO&E for NATO I can tell you that I don't

Steve

Not one, but two things to be thankful for today! Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day (unless of course you live in a part of the world where Bird worship is not practiced).

[RecceDG]

Thanks for the follow up info. It's too late to make changes for v1.31 because it's been finalized, however there probably will be a v1.32 at some point and I can get some tweaks in then.

Here's one thing I don't really understand - why are the ORBAT definitions hard-coded, instead of being an XML file (or whatever) that could be user-modified?

Or allow more flexibility/granularity in how the units are purchased and allocated?

ORBATs are rarely what the book says, and sometimes scenarios call for oddball force mixes and command relationships. The scenario design tool should allow ORBATs to be hand-tuned to fit the needs of the scenario without the program forcing a specific force structure.

You can't do (for example) multi-national forces with one force OPCON or OPCOM to another nation, yet that could easily happen (and does happen) There's a reason why NATO countries have interoperable radios and crypto....

It's just weird that the game is so dependent on these hardcoded relationships.

DG

[Battlefront.com]

The short answer about hardcoding is that most people playing the game don't have a clue how to organize units. We want standards to be set and not have people monkeying around with things in completely unrealistic ways. Combat Mission has always been, and will always be, a hybrid between a game (i.e. anything fun is OK) and a simulation (i.e. anything unrealistic is discouraged). That's what keeps CM from becoming something like Company of Heros or a sim that is so good that only a staff officer would love it. Unit compositions and organizations are one of the critical components for keeping a good balance.

Having said that, as I said the new version of the game engine (Normandy forward) does have more flexibility in it than CM:SF. Not as much as I would like to see, but still a big step forwards to what I envisioned for Shock Force six years ago. Designing something is easy, implementing it along with everything else is where things get rather tricky.

As we move forward people will have more control over attaching component pieces together and not suffer C2 problems as you do in CM:SF right now. Which is actually the only significant problem in CM:SF now. I mean, you can organize things exactly as described above right now, today. The problem is the C2 connections would not work properly in some cases (ranging from irrelevant to serious).

On a different note:

You can't do (for example) multi-national forces with one force OPCON or OPCOM to another nation, yet that could easily happen (and does happen) There's a reason why NATO countries have interoperable radios and crypto....

This is above CM's level of simulation for the most part. A scenario that has a Platoon of US Army Heavy Infantry backed up by a German Tank Platoon following up on Canadian Recce findings would be unrealistic to the extreme. I know that in Afghanistan there is lower level cooperation amongst some nations, but this is largely due to resource shortages and the COIN nature of the fight. Neither are relevant for the CM:SF setting.

Steve

[The_Capt]

Yeah, I definitely caught a whiff of the GMR in the game ORBAT. Sadly, that bit of doctrine was never fully realized and was subsequently overtaken by events.

And to be honest, there's more than a little bit of the "good idea fairy" in that document.

The lack of the square combat team is a little more surprising. The SCT is the cornerstone of ATOC and (shocking!) the Combat Team Commander's course, both run under the auspices of the Tactics School in CTC. The Tactics School owns everything combined arms.

Having read the other thread, I'm not going to stick my nose into the infantry stuff. I know what G Coy deployed with on ROTO 6 (2 LAV III Pl, 1 RG31 Pl) but that's hardly the template by which to base everything on. (And I thought the Carl G was carried in the Pl weapon's section with the C6... whatever. Not My Lane)

But Armour, that I know, and it is currently not exactly right.

I'll do up a slide sometime in the next little while and show the changes graphically.

DG

On the square cbt team I can chime in. The SCT is a tactical grouping, not a mission element that is hardwired in a CMSF ORBAT. We have the Independent BG, reflecting the old Tac Self-Suffcient Unit concept...still being pushed in the Lords of Nine within the Army. Most expect that to die btw.

We do train heavily (maybe too heavily) on the square cbt team but we seldom...if ever have actually pushed it into Cbt. It is a very handy grouping to teach combined arms tactics but in reality it does not come as a..."there goes the 3rd Cdn Cbt Team" into a mission like Syria. It is formed up and task tailored on the fly.

Assualt troops...didn't these fade away with the Pioneers (who are coming back but not in 2008)? I have nothing showing that piece as back on the table.

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, we need to remember two very critical things whenever we talk about ORBATS or TO&E (two different, but related, concepts BTW). Those two things are:

1. CM:SF is designed to simulate a high intensity, high tempo, predominantly conventional mech heavy combined arms conflict. Low intensity, limited scope operations can be done in CM:SF to some extent, but it is not what the game specifically caters to.

2. We are only interested in what #1 would look like within the 2008 timeframe, give or take a year.

These two points are very important because much of what we see in Afghanistan or Iraq today is not what we would see in CM:SF's setting.

Steve

[The_Capt]

Don't get me wrong, I would expect to see square cbt teams in Syria, in fact they would be most likey beefed beyond what RecceDG has described. I would throw in Griffons for aerial recce and TUA to cover the flanks and a composite troop of Engineers (Field and Armoured). But when talking about what "we would send" the Independent BG is the best example and Cbt team would be assembled internally.

The other thing we have to watch is "Regt-doctrine". In the engineers we saw this all the time. In fact at one point we had one Regt doing their own version of minefield breaching drills. No unit in Canada is immune from this and every one of them do things slightly differently.

To my mind CMSF needs to take a reasonable baseline and here the only place we can really turn to is doctrine (warts and all) and build from there.

[RecceDG]

A scenario that has a Platoon of US Army Heavy Infantry backed up by a German Tank Platoon following up on Canadian Recce findings would be unrealistic to the extreme.

No it wouldn't - I've seen this kind of thing happen live. And not just in "low" (it's hard to call a full combat team offensive operation "low") intensity ops, but also in Cold War operations like Germany.

It was routine - ROUTINE - to have operations with multiple NATO members mixed together at the scale simulated in CM-SF. And usually because the Op required a force mix that no one nation could generate on its own. One country provides the infantry, one the tanks, and one the recce? Sure!

As soon as you have multi-national operations you have the potential for subunits to be attached/detached to other commands based on operational need. And once forces leave the gate... man, ANYTHING can happen.

Especially once a fight breaks out. Troops have this way of marching towards the sound of the guns and a fight has a way of drawing out who is in your AOR. A scenario in which a German platoon is relieved by a Yank company (or vice versa) is completely legitimate.

But besides the point... why attempt to enforce "purity" at the ORBAT level? If a customer wants to play a "what if?" scenario using an unlikely combination of units, why stop him? "Unlikely" can be both fun and instructive.

Ack the "simulation" aspect; got it. Certainly this makes tons of sense at the weapon platform capability level. An M16 destroying a tank has no value whatsoever. The performance of the equipment and soldiers should be simulated as accurately as possible, no question.

But the responsibility for enforcing "realistic" force mixes and ORBATs is a scenario designer responsibility, not the responsibility of the game engine. If you want to police realism, do it by auditing the scenarios and only publish or "bless" the ones that meet requirements.

Lord knows this isn't happening now, given the fact that most scenarios I've encountered underestimate the force requirements for urban operations by a factor of ten or more. One company with 7 objectives in a 4 square km of city? Not bloody likely....

On the square cbt team I can chime in. The SCT is a tactical grouping, not a mission element that is hardwired in a CMSF ORBAT.

Well, that's a discussion about functional vs administrative grouping.

Yes, a combat team is a functional grouping (and by design) Nowhere will you find a unit patch or cap badge reflecting the "First Canadian Combat Team" (or whatever) The individual components (being the armoured sqn, the infantry coy, and the various odds and sods from the supporting arms) are pulled from whatever formations happen to be handy at the time.

Each one of those formations - the RCD, the RCR, the PPCLI etc - are administrative groupings. They CAN be functional groupings as well (as unlikely as it would ever be to see A, B, C, and D sqns RCD on the start line as a full-up armoured regiment ever again, it is technically possible) but for the most part, the Regimental/Battalion formations exist to force-generate Sqn and Coy sized units to operate in a combat team context.

CM-SF is all about functional groupings, not administrative groupings. That makes a square combat team not just a legitimate CM-SF ORBAT element, but arguably the primary one.

Plus, when a combat team is formed, there is a definite command relationship between all the moving parts and the combat team commander. Assuming the Inf Coy has the combat team command, double-clicking his icon should select the whole combat team, because they all report to him. They do it through the subunit chains of command, and that relationship is not permanent, (it ends once the mission is over and the consistent subunits revert back to their administrative groupings) but for the duration of the mission, he's the dude. And given that it it impossible to assign command relationships within the scenario editor, the only way to do that is to provide a "square combat team" unit/orbat within CM-SF.

Strictly speaking, there should be two of them - one of "square combat team - infantry lead" and "square combat team - armour lead"

(And if you have to pick one... God and the Corps forgive me - pick the "Infantry Lead" version, as that is the default ATOC standard)

We have the Independent BG, reflecting the old Tac Self-Suffcient Unit concept...still being pushed in the Lords of Nine within the Army. Most expect that to die btw.

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

We do train heavily (maybe too heavily) on the square cbt team but we seldom...if ever have actually pushed it into Cbt.

Sure we do - did it all the time in WW2, practiced it constantly in Germany during the Cold War years, and we have done combat team ops in Afghanistan.

It is a very handy grouping to teach combined arms tactics but in reality it does not come as a..."there goes the 3rd Cdn Cbt Team" into a mission like Syria. It is formed up and task tailored on the fly.

See above ref. functional vs admin groupings and CM-SF.

Were we to cross the border into Syria, the forces assigned to the initial assault would assuredly be assigned into combat teams. For follow-on missions, the combat team would be the start-state and then there'd be task-tailoring going on based on the nature of the mission and the forces available. You'd see combat team plus ops, combat team minus ops, "half team" ops, ops with more armour and less infantry, and vice versa.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing that the combat team be the ONLY building block allowed.

But it makes a great - and realistic - default option.

Assualt troops...didn't these fade away with the Pioneers (who are coming back but not in 2008)? I have nothing showing that piece as back on the table.

Very analogous. The assault trooper training was less formal than the Pioneers, and it wasn't necessary for an assault troop to get full-on pioneer certification (you can make an assault troops out of soldiers trained to CAP but not DP1 - although ideally they'd have all the gucci courses)

There is a movement to replace the assault troops within the Corps. Courses have been run recently....

One can make the argument that, were we looking at a major high-intensity operation like Syria, that there'd be a rush to reinstate the assault troops into the recce sqn. Finding the manpower for it is an issue... but that's an issue with everything in the CM-SF universe.

The inclusion of the assault troop in the recce sqn isn't a sword I'd be willing to die on - if it doesn't make it into the game, no harm no foul. That's why it got the asterisk.

DG

[Battlefront.com]

Regarding low level mixing of multi-national troops... why in God's name would anybody WANT to do this? I know NATO trains for the possibility, but with the language and cultural barriers I don't see it as being very desirable for a full tempo operation except as a last resort. Certainly there is no reason for any of the Battle Groups we have in CM:SF to look at other nations to provide capabilities (except air, of course) since each has all the component pieces of modern warfare:

Recon

Pioneers

Armored Infantry

Light/Medium Infantry (sometimes both)

Armor

Anti-Armor

Artillery

Now, there is nothing stopping you from having a German Tank Platoon backing up a Dutch Mech Infantry Platoon, fighting alongside a US Marines CAT Platoon with a British Recce element out in front. Nothing at all. The only issue is that they can't communicate with each other, which in real life would be the #1 problem with such an arrangement. So it's not exactly unrealistic, though of course taken to an extreme.

Back to the point about allowing people to move their own forces around and task organize them as they please, complete with C2 connections. This was always intended to be a part of CMx2's capabilities and Normandy helps take it a step further than Shock Force. It's not a conceptual issue as much as it is an implementation issue.

Still, as I said we are definitely strongly in favor of enforcing sensible ORBATS. First reason is that most people playing the game don't have a clue how to organize their forces, so they look to the game to set the standard. We allow people to customize their ORBATS already (i.e. you can delete and add anything you like), it's just that the C2 connections can't be unhooked/rehooked to work with whatever the player sets up.

Steve

[RecceDG]

Regarding low level mixing of multi-national troops... why in God's name would anybody WANT to do this?

Because the enemy gets a vote.

One of the defining characteristics of Western warfare since 1990 or so is that while individual units have just unbelievable firepower, protection, and mobility, the forces deployed to fight are orders of magnitude smaller than they should be - because they are too expensive to deploy en masse.

Nobody can afford to field the kinds of corps-level formations that were stock in trade in WW2. There isn't the industrial capacity, nor the ready manpower, nor the transport, nor the raw cash to stand up and deploy forces of that size that quickly.

So when it comes to applying troops to tasks, you go with what is on hand. Ideally you go with missions that are all one nation, and the "first line" missions usually are (unless one nation has a specific capability that others lack - ie tanks in Kandahar means Canadians, where helicopter gunships are Yanks - a Griffon with a door gunner isn't a "gunship", really) But if something else comes up (because the enemy has his own plans and they rarely dovetail with yours) and you have to start employing reserve troops (not "reservists" per sae, but national troops not yet assigned to a mission) you quickly start looking at mixed national mission elements.

And things get even crazier once you start mixing the squirrels in.

RC(S)'s FP unit was Dutch. TFK was mostly Canadian, but the FP element at KAF was Romanian and British. TFK also had an American battalion attached OPCOM. There were also some French units running around - and that was just ISAF. We also had American OEF units running around under a completely different chain of command and ROEs - and that's just the high points. And just in 2008; Kandahar Province looks completely different now in 2010 with way more Americans and God knows who else.

Language was - mostly - not an issue. The radios and crypto are standardized across NATO (or you borrow equipment from nations you need to talk to) Everybody speaks enough English to make it work, or they put their English speakers on the radios.

Yeah, it is a colossal pain in the ass, but that is coalition warfare for you.

There is this grognard tendency to assume that ORBATs are like the layout of a chessboard at the start of a match. Everybody gets 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, etc etc and they start out in perfect formation - and every game of chess is laid out like every other, so if the pieces on a chessboard constitute a "battalion", every battalion has the same pieces in the same formation.

No way, no how does that match reality.

Instead, everybody moves mountains to get whatever they can to the party, and once all the moving parts are on the ground, they get tactically grouped in whatever way makes the most sense. And next week, when the mission changes and after losses, breakdowns, and HLTA come into play, the groupings will be reshuffled to match the new mission.

And other stuff can come into play too.

I'll give you an example - the primary recce element since the invention of internal combustion has been the 2-car patrol. The size of the troop (the next level up) has varied from 5 to 12 cars depending on a number of historical circumstances, but the patrol has always been 2 cars.

Until Afghanistan. A theatre order came out stating that the minimum tactical element had to consist of 3 "A" vehicles - this because the primary threat was IED, and an IED that knocked out a single vehicle left a 2-vehicle patrol all alone. This was considered OK in a cold war scenario where there was a definite "this side towards enemy" threat direction, but in the Afghan "perpetually surrounded" situation that risk was decided to be too large. So the recce patrol became three cars, and the troop became six.

There is ZERO doctrine for this. All the TTPs for moving and fighting a 3-car patrol had to be invented on the fly by the people actually executing it. This is sub-optimal.

But the enemy had his vote, and we had to change tactics to accommodate the actual tactical situation. At the end of the day, ORBATs and doctrine are just tools in the toolbox - you don't use a screwdriver to pound in nails; neither do you insist on rigid adherence to a theoretical ideal doctrine if it doesn't provide maximum advantage on the ground against the very real enemy.

...all of which sounds like I'm arguing against myself, given that the opening salvo in this thread was that the game units don't match doctrine.

The point I'm trying to make here is that it is good that the scenario editor contains pre-baked units with the correct theoretical structure and command relationships for that nation and arm type, and that they can be simply added to a scenario by choosing the basic formation building block. The more of these there are, the more likely it is going to be that a scenario written by someone who does not understand how to structure forces will be "correct", and the easier it is for someone who does understand how to deploy them to build a common unit.

I really want to see a Canadian armoured squadron have all 19 of its tanks by default. I want to see a Coyote Recce troop have its dismounts, and I want those dismounts to have a much higher than normal spot percentage. I want to be able to click on "Canadian Square Combat Team" and get a unit with a tank squadron, an infantry coy, a FOO, and some engineers - with the proper command structure - all at once, so I don't have to chisel one out of a battle group formation.

But I also want the flexibility to be able to play around with ORBATs with more granularity, either to reflect oddball conditions (for either play challenge or historical reasons) or to play "what if" scenarios.

This was always intended to be a part of CMx2's capabilities and Normandy helps take it a step further than Shock Force. It's not a conceptual issue as much as it is an implementation issue.

Well is this ever going to make it back into Shock Force?

Shock Force, as it sits right now, is very nearly a replacement for JANUS/JCATS (as far as individual training goes) I use it to keep my tactical skills sharp, and to game out ideas and scenarios. I feel that it has helped me professionally.

There are a number of things that aren't quite there yet: artillery sucks; the fire effects are bang on but the allocation of fire and the control of missions and ammo are just out to lunch. There isn't a good way to show LOS from a unit at a glance. Targets (both area and enemy) need to be able to be assigned even if the target is out of LOS, so that a unit will start engaging once it has moved into a position where it has LOS (11B this is 11. When you come over the hill directly to your front, you will see a a lone building 400 metres out next to a copse of small trees. There are enemy infantry on the second floor - engage them) and there needs to be a movement command that is "move along this path until you are hull down to the current target".

I'd also like a way to define formations and have units move and turn in formation.

Enemy AI needs some more options, and there are scenario design tools I'd like to see too.

But overall, it is getting very, very close. I'd hate to see that abandoned.

DG

[Erik Springelkamp]

Now, there is nothing stopping you from having a German Tank Platoon backing up a Dutch Mech Infantry Platoon, fighting alongside a US Marines CAT Platoon with a British Recce element out in front. Nothing at all. The only issue is that they can't communicate with each other

Steve

But when you attach engineers of the same nationality to a mech company, can they communicate with the company forces?

They don't show a common upper command level in the command window.

[The_Capt]

RecceDG

Couple points:

- Not sure what the fuss is about, I just assembled a square cbt team in the editor. Yes I had to live with BG HQ and CS HQ but stick them in the back (where they would be in RL anyway). I am not sure what your issue about lack of flexibility is as you can really put together any tatical grouping you like with the editor. I do take you point on C2 and it would be nice to have a India C/S provide C2 to the armour but if you leave the BG comd on the board it all link back to him. Not perfect but until the editor allows the player to tinker with C2 linkages it is the best we can hope for right now and not totally unrealistic.

- The SCT is an ideal construct to teach combined arms tactics. It is not a mission element. We pull together all sorts of combat teams and rarely, in modern history the SCT is not the norm in fact I don't think we ever formed a full one in AFG. Pushing it as a static TO&E element in CMSF is a mistake in my opinion as it does not reflect current reality. Why not a Tango heavy Cbt team? Infantry heavy? Hell in AFG we had an "Engr Cbt team" at one point building rte Summit. Now if the Army actually goes thru with the affilitated BG concept than a "Cdn Armd Cavalry Sqn" starts to make more sense but in 2008...no so much.

- The BG is a functional grouping but we deploy them as mission elements. Given the scope of the game this makes the BG and Bn the primary element in a CMSF ORBAT. Picking a specific sub-unit grouping only situates the player and reduces flexibility, not enhance it.

- To summarize in my opinion and the last 20 yrs will back me up, the Independent BG followed by the Inf Bn or Bn group should be the primary units for Canada in CMSF to represent a Canadian contribution. Players can mix and match as reqr but within the context of the BG. It is an odd argument as the BG is in fact a functional grouping we have made into an admin one. In reality the Recce Sqn is a CMBG asset cut from a Div Recce Regt, again in a functional grouping that has been made admin by need vice want.

- Re: assault troops. Here we have to be very careful. We did stick a lot of "what would we do here" in the game but quickly training assault troops is a little too far for a snap deployment to Syria in my mind.

- Multi-national Ops. Ooo boy, do we really have to open up this can of worms? As you point out we do it in theatre because we have to. But no way can we paint this a seamless. Why? We do not get together in pre-deployment training. In fact, thanks to budget cuts we rarely get together to train at all.

I think CMSF is very realistic wrt C2 of multi-national tactical sub-units, albeit in a roundabout way. There is no way you can honestly tell me a dutch platoon is going to work seamlessly into a Cdn Cbt team. Over time the wrinkles would be sorted out but initially the C2 would be sloppy even if we are all speaking english on radios that can talk to each other. Every nation does things differently, every nation is equiped differently and that reality, along with no collective trg is well reflected in the C2 issues in CMSF if we roll a Dutch Coy into a Cdn BG. There would be degradation in C2 benefits...hell we see this working with the Americans. Logistics are a nightmare too because NATO standard...isnt.

To paint a seamless NATO cross grouping picture without any penalties to the player is very inaccurate...and I too have lived this. You can group them in the editor but you will pay a price..just like we do in RL. Things work out in the long run but how do you reflect that in CMSF? My suggestion is to increase the experience of the attached unit to reflect better integration...this is a game after all.

[Battlefront.com]

There is no way you can honestly tell me a dutch platoon is going to work seamlessly into a Cdn Cbt team.

My point exactly.

RecceDG points out that the "enemy has a vote" and that can dictate the need for ad-hoc low level multi-national task forces. True, but only if one lets the enemy show up to the ballot box Massive effort is expended at the strategic and operational levels to denny the enemy the "right to vote". In the Cold War scenario this wasn't so easy to do because the enemy had a credible capability of launching a ground war any time, any where (at least in theory, we now know differently). But in the Syrian setting? No way.

Like Iraq the forces going into the country would be optimally organized and major efforts undertaken to make sure of its success. Which means multi-national forces would be going in sufficiently bulked up to handle their own tactical problems most of the time. Despite massive budget cuts, each NATO nation retains proportional full spectrum forces to achieve such a bulking up. As I said, we included all of these forces for each and every nation:

Recon

Pioneers

Armored Infantry

Light/Medium Infantry (sometimes both)

Armor

Anti-Armor

Artillery

Realistically there should be no need, in a Syrian setting, for a Canadian Mech Infantry Company to suddenly need Dutch Engineers to clear a path for it. Because if the Dutch Engineers were doing that for the Canadians, then who would be clearing the path for the Dutch Mech Infantry? The Germans? Then who would be doing the engineering work for the Germans? So on and so forth.

Again, I'm not saying that NATO doesn't train for cross attachments between nations with the understanding that they might do it for real in some battle some day. Obviously they do. But given a choice between having to work with multi-national forces in a time sensitive tactical engagement and NOT having to... I think everybody should agree not having to is the better way to go every time, all the time. This is certainly the feeling I get from reading low and mid level commander's comments from ops in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Therefore, the emphasis has been (and should be) setting the stage in such a way that low level cross attachments are a remote possibility instead of a forgone conclusion. CM:SF simulates this fairly well, though definitely not perfectly. As it simulates customized single nation ORBATS fairly well but not perfectly.

As for the direction of Shock Force going forward... the game Family is complete and will only be maintained from here on out, not expanded. Modern warfare, however, will not be abandoned. CM:SF 2, which is a temperate setting against a "1st rate" OPFOR, is already in the works. This will include all of the improvements made before it as well as new features specifically made for CM:SF 2. Backwards compatibility is problematic and we do not plan on going that route.

Steve

[dan/california]

Two things:

1) Steve, you forgot the almost automatic plug that for an appropriately sized check the Canadian MOD can get CMSF with anything it wants. Unlikely, but worth noting.

2) Given the accumulation of art work & TO&Es, how hard would be have a couple of tail end modules for CMSF2 simulate most of the current sand box? Of course there seems to be a non zero chance of a second Korean War to calibrate the game against. Thats a rather thin silver lining for that particular cloud though.

[Battlefront.com]

I forgot to highlight a comment made by RecceDG:

RC(S)'s FP unit was Dutch. TFK was mostly Canadian, but the FP element at KAF was Romanian and British. TFK also had an American battalion attached OPCOM. There were also some French units running around - and that was just ISAF. We also had American OEF units running around under a completely different chain of command and ROEs - and that's just the high points. And just in 2008; Kandahar Province looks completely different now in 2010 with way more Americans and God knows who else.

This is why I stressed that CM:SF is *not* a COIN simulator. As hot as the combat gets in Afghanistan, it's still low intensity on the spectrum. The Syrian setting is high intensity. The two environments, while they share a lot of common elements, are inherently different beasts.

The Syrian setting, which is more akin to the initial assault into Iraq, is not a hodgepodge of national dribs and drabs tossed into a big pot and and stirred around as needed. Afghanistan is more like Bosnia in that sense. Each nation sends a little bit of whatever and then they figure out what to do with it on the ground. This is not how a planned, full scale invasion would happen.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Dan,

Yup, given the correct incentives by his government, RecceDG could get everything he wants and then some

We have no plans to tie CM:SF 1's content back into CM:SF 2 when it is done. But since we're a ways away from that decision point I shouldn't say it can't or won't happen. At this point all I can say is we have no plans for it.

Steve

[The_Capt]

Dan,

Yup, given the correct incentives by his government, RecceDG could get everything he wants and then some

We have no plans to tie CM:SF 1's content back into CM:SF 2 when it is done. But since we're a ways away from that decision point I shouldn't say it can't or won't happen. At this point all I can say is we have no plans for it.

Steve

LOL. Considering we are shuffling into the latter half of the 20th century wrt use of simulations, you would seriously have to cut back on a lot of features before we would consider buying. So go back to pong-level graphics, dice rolling and setup shop in Quebec and you could probably snag a muli-million dollar contract.

[Battlefront.com]

Hehe... yeah, Quebec is fast becoming a major game making power.

But I don't know what you mean about Canadian Army budget cuts. I mean, they still have money enough to train guys to do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=lgwF8mdQwlw&feature=player_embeddedd

Thanks to JonS for sending me the link.

Steve