Cohesion in CMBN?

[Broadsword56]

I know CMBN doesn't model unit cohesion directly; just that the "soft" factors like Leadership, Morale, Experience, Fatigue, etc., all can change during combat and affect a unit's ability to continue as an effective fighting force.

But can the designers share this with us: At what casualty level (a percentage of losses) would a typical unit in CMBN no longer be able to keep fighting effectively? I assume the casualties alone don't determine this, but that they trigger a number of other decreases in the "soft factors." Still, a ballpark idea?

Those of us who are trying to translate between larger-scale boardgames (which model cohesion hits more than just losses of personnel/guns/vehicles) and CMBN tactical battles are discussing this a lot lately.

Experts in the field say 15% casualties in one day's fighting did enough damage to the cohesion of a US unit in Normandy to make it have to stop fighting, pull back, and rest for a day or so.

But we expect CMBN battles to turn out a lot bloodier than that. So, to make translations work properly, it would help a lot if we could judge what level of casualties in CMBN would correspond to that ballpark 15% figure from real life (i.e. overall combat ineffectiveness).

[JonS]

Experts in the field say 15% casualties in one day's fighting did enough damage to the cohesion of a US unit in Normandy to make it have to stop fighting, pull back, and rest for a day or so.

Do you have a reference for that? It's an interesting field, and I'd like to delve into it some more.

Thanks

Jon

[Michael Emrys]

Experts in the field say 15% casualties in one day's fighting did enough damage to the cohesion of a US unit in Normandy to make it have to stop fighting, pull back, and rest for a day or so.

I'd guess that is a rough average of several formations of varying experience, leadership, and other hard to account for factors, such as how tired and/or dispirited they were prior to the day's fighting. Given the possible highly varied states that units can be in in CM, and the level of detail in general, I'm not sure that a broad number like that would be especially useful. It would depend on how you chose to interpret anyway and which way you were headed with it; i.e., from the general to the particular or vice versa.

Michael

[Broadsword56]

I kind of expected a sensible answer like that, and naturally we're talking gross generalizations here -- but let me try again, putting it in the negative...

In CMBN, will we possibly see units having suffered 15% casualties continuing to fight effectively? 20% 30%? 40%? At what level of casualties would the game engine likely say "no way they're still able to fight"?

[Broadsword56]

Do you have a reference for that? It's an interesting field, and I'd like to delve into it some more.

Thanks

Jon

See my post #49 referencing Joseph Balkoski's recent e-mail on this discussion page -- he qualifies the statement, making clear that it's not any kind of hard-and-fast rule. But it's been a good starting point for discussion:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=95693&page=5

(This is his life's work, and he's probably studied it more than anyone)

[Michael Emrys]

In CMBN, will we possibly see units having suffered 15% casualties continuing to fight effectively? 20% 30%? 40%? At what level of casualties would the game engine likely say "no way they're still able to fight"?

Again, I'd say that depends on what traits they begin the scenario with. Some units would break at the first sign of bloodshed while others might fight to the last man. I would like to add parenthetically that I have the sense that at the scale of CM, squads and especially teams would very quickly have as their major concern self-preservation. Which is to say that it would tend to kick in before the 10% casualty level was reached. Where the higher numbers come from are cases where a squad or a larger unit got caught in an ambush or a sudden barrage and may have lost 50% or more of their men before they had time to react. That would drive the average up.

Michael

[Ryujin]

Keep in mind as mentioned before, CM models engagements where both sides are willing to put up a serious fight. In many cases the situation didn't warrant an all out slugfest for one side or the other and they'd pull back, which is why historical numbers would probably be pretty low compared to what you see in CM.

It also depends on how you take "fight effectively". They may keep fighting after a few causalities, but with poorly aimed fire.

However, the key point is it's probably going to be a lot higher than 15% in most cases given the nature of CM. Easily 60% before they break I'd think.

[Broadsword56]

Aha -- thank you Ryujin. So we'll have to play CMBN awhile to see this for ourselves, but it's sounding to me like (all other things being equal) maybe 60% casualties CMBN could approximate 15% casualties real-world.

So, when I use Balkoski's St Lo boardgame as an op level, for example, one cohesion hit to a battalion reduces it, and the second cohesion hit eliminates it. If I play out a battle in CMBN, then at battle's end any unit having lost 60% casualties would go back to the operational game with a step loss, I guess. And then maybe 80%-100% becomes the level for 2 step losses. What do you think?

[JonS]

See my post #49 referencing Joseph Balkoski's recent e-mail on this discussion page -- he qualifies the statement, making clear that it's not any kind of hard-and-fast rule.

Ah. Ok. So 'experts' is actually 'expert', and 'say that' is actually 'opined off the cuff in an informal chat session.'

[Broadsword56]

If you've got more sources to add to the discussion, let's hear them -- No one's interested in verbal duels here or scoring ego points. I've got no personal interest in any particular percentage figure, from any particular source. I'm just trying to get to a useful abstraction for this particular game design purpose, and inviting anyone interested in passing the time with a constructive idea to join in.

[JonS]

No, I don't. That's the point. I thought you'd come across something substantial and considered, but alas it isn't.

[Battlefront.com]

Gotta agree with JonS here. The "15%" is a meaningless figure IMHO. First of all, I don't know what that was based on. Second, I don't know what "15%" is actually supposed to mean. Timeframe, circumstances, etc. are quite important to consider.

As has been said already, casualties and how they affect combat performance is extremely context sensitive. A unit that is already beat down, or one that wasn't very good to start with, will likely behave differently than a unit that is of superior quality and used to taking losses. Likewise, a unit that is fighting with its back to the wall will fight differently than one which was given a mission to "see if anybody is in the town ahead".

Since there is no one answer in real life, there's no one right answer to give in terms of how CM performs.

What I can say is that CM only portrays a very small slice of combat situations. That's because nobody wants to play the majority of combat situations where one side fires a few shots and the other side retreats, or both sides exchange scattered rifle fire for a day, or where the attacker finds a minefield and decides to "exit the map" and try something else on "a different map".

Couple this with the inability to prevent players from doing what they want to do, as opposed to what they would do if they were in WW2 for real, and casualties in CM will be distinctly higher than the average WW2 battle and probably a tick higher than the types of battles CM portrays.

Steve

[JonS]

Coincidentally, I was just browsing over at Stone & Stone, and came across this:

http://stonebooks.com/archives/071118.shtml

Wrong front, wrong army, wrong year, but it's nevertheless in the right subjective ballpark

[skelley]

Just found this:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/101-5-1/f545-aca.htm

Says 31-50% Casualty rate the Division becomes combat ineffective. But that is just a rule of thumb. Surely different factors weigh in.

[JonS]

Just found this:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/101-5-1/f545-aca.htm

Says 31-50% Casualty rate the Division becomes combat ineffective.

And since we already know that casualties were overwhelmingly concentrated in the few rifle companies in each division, that 31-50% for the division becomes something like 80-90% in the kinds of units that CM uses :eek:

[leakyD]

"Base" unit cohesion thresholds are so nebulous that's it almost impossbile to define!

I feel unit cohesion should be circumstantially dependent:

Training? Environment? Leadership? Historical Timeframe? Orders? Moral? Game Battle Type?

If one wants "realism" play a scenario (or agreed upon QB) made for such.

Want to go balls out and fight to the death? Open-ended QB.

I love playing both.

With open-ended QB's, once in a while, I pull out of overwhelming odds when player/AI makes mistakes. Pretty dang satisfying. (QB AAR was a great example).

For realism, I'll play a scenario made-as-such vs human. NOT easy!

Both are fun, but in a VERY different way...

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, when looking at anything over Battalion in size one has to keep in mind that only a fraction of the headcount is actively engaged in combat. It's only situations where the large sized unit is completely cut off that the entire strength can be be thought of as potentially combat. Even then, a certain percentage is not directly engaged in frontline fighting. They usually are fed in as replacements or are tasked with holding down areas that are relatively quiet compared to others.

Steve

[skelley]

And since we already know that casualties were overwhelmingly concentrated in the few rifle companies in each division, that 31-50% for the division becomes something like 80-90% in the kinds of units that CM uses :eek:

I wouldn't go that high. Maybe if you are playing the AI and completly destroying them. I usually try to get out of whatever mess I got into before I lose half my men. Not saying that those casualty rates won't happen but they are way outside the norm. I usually use beat up platoons to guard conquered victory locations rather than push them past about 30% casualty rates although sometime you have to.

In real life, at least with western armies, they were rarely pushed that far. Even a meat grinder like Iwo Jima had an overall casualty rate of about 30% with some Battalions taking 70% casualties. But that is over the 40 or so days of combat not 1 or 4 hours.

I'm not advocating reducing the amount of casualties in the game. I love the knock down drag out scraps, just pointing out that 80% is not the norm.

[Magpie_Oz]

I'd be think less about an absolute number and look more at "casualties over time". A unit might sustain 50% casualties over a week and be ok but on the other hand 10% in 5 minutes could leave it devastated.

Think of a section of 10 men. In an advance if one man falls every 2 minutes the unit is likely to keep going as the casualties are mounting steadily, where as if 5 of them are taken down in one hit chances are the other 5 will stop in their tracks.

[dieseltaylor]

Without a doubt the relevant figures are the platoon strengths at point in time. I have seen plenty of figures where a company can barely muster half its strength after taking a pasting. And I am even more surprised that no one so far has given actual figures, I am not such a grog that I keep that info handy : )

Also I think that a proportion of time the losses are heavy in a brief few minutes and after that event any further losses are incidental. SO a daily loss rate is actually not that relevant whilst reports by 15 minutes might show the way losses occur.

In CMBN it will be real action in the sense that something is on - and if one were to graph losses to time it would have a distinctly different profile to holding formations. But graph it over a division and the picture becomes horribly useless = apart from if you are an Army commander. But that is not where we are at.

"The elimination of this pocket had cost the Battalion some 70 casualties including almost a complete platoon of 'C' Company, and a large section of the Pioneer Platoon, beaded by Lt Shimmin and the Pioneer Serjeant, Sjt. Taylor. "

http://royal-ulster-rifles-ww2.blogspot.com/2010/11/1st-december-1944-second-attack-on.html

If you read the story you may want to reasd the first part which is all of the right scale

Most of 29 November was spent in close and careful reconnaissance of the ground by Company and Platoon Commanders. It was a deliberate operation, and for once, time for discussion of plan, study of air photographs and finally decision, was adequate for commanders at every level.

http://royal-ulster-rifles-ww2.blogspot.com/2010/11/29th-to-30th-november-1944-attack-on.html

[JSB]

I noted that scenario designers sometimes tend to idealization and I guess that green troops are more common in reality than on a combat mission map.

I was surprised to see CMAK ETO scenarios involving loads of veteran or crack FJ, inevitably fighting to death.

Some of them were kids, did'nt even have a complete instruction period, mixed with East front veterans.

Mix of green and veteran = regular, no? (with veteran HQ and teams for example)

101th Airborne in june 44...regular? (it's a question, not a provocation)

[dieseltaylor]

JonS

you still cannot know fom reading it how high each building is, nor exactly how many and where the doors are, or exactly how many windows there are and what their layout is. In the built up area of Vierville you can't even be sure where one building ends and the next begins. Most of the fields have no indication of where the gate or gates are, and there is no indication of where it is possible to pass through the hedges. There is also no indication of ditches, culverts, and other terrain critical for moving under fire. And remember; this is the best map the Allied forces would ever get while they were in Normandy.

All that information is available at an instant for every player of every map ever made in the CM-verse.

I am a little depressed that it is assumed because we do not know the height of a building from a map this reflects badly on the ease to see this in game. Maps cannot possibly show every feature unless you are down to 50ft to the inch or some equally impractable scale. But what many men would have had is the Mk1 brain which could interpret and confirm using the Mk1 eyeball.

Building heights - I mean for pete's sake the range of building heights could almost be predicted even if you had no maps. Were doors and windows are - pretty much the same for every house built but actually not that important.

Interpreting maps. All English Grammar schools taught geography and map interpretation was part of the syllabus. Many belonged to the Scouts where practical application was natural. And of course OTC or induction would add the military gloss.

My father tells me that they only used 1" to 1 mile pre-war however despite not being overly detailed assumptions could be made.

Perhaps most misunderstood but taught even to me was the usefulness of drawing cross-sections through terrain to calculate visible points, and also contours could indicate convex and concave slopes, narrow and broad valleys, and if narrow the likelihood of a watercourse even if too tiny to be included on the map.

It now occurs to me that in many countries the education system may not include map-reading, or even physical geography in their curriculum so that what was reasonably obvious to men in 1944 might seem difficult now.

End of day - then and now you had to suck and see because that was the only real way you would find out if the enemy was there or not.

[JonS]

But in CM you don't have to suck it and see, because you can see everything, in exact detail, that is perfectly accurate and reliable.

[dieseltaylor]

JonS- if you read the last sentence of mine I am talking about the enemy not a geographical feature!

In CMBN, unless I am sadly mislead, you do not get to see the enemy as a matter of course - you have to suck it and see if there is anyone in a wood, house, barn, ditch. Exactly as in 1944. : )

BTW you mentioned the recon guys for the US not being that reliable in discenting features. It does seem bizarre given the entirly similar countryside in the UK.

[Battlefront.com]

One of my favorite examples to cite when we talk about "average" and "daily" losses is a first hand account of a US Rifle platoon that stumbled into a bunker ambush. The guy being interviewed was the only one to survive. I'm sure the Rifle Platoon would have LOVED to call it a day after 15% casualties were reached, but for some reason the Germans weren't willing to let them go. Gamey bastards

Steve