Wish for Campaign Replacements

[winkelried]

It would be nice to have separate replacement levels for:

• Armor
  
• Light Armor
  
• Trucks and the like
  
• Infantry
  

e.g. after a battle the force could replace infantry losses, but not armor losses.

[Erwin]

It would also be great to have some units gain experience between battles in a campaign. Or, the ability to give some high-performing units awards etc like in Silent Hunter.

Now that we have such a greater detailed depiction of units, I have never understood the objections to this since battles could easily be weeks or even months apart. It would really make one identify with and care about one's men in a very "realistic" RL manner.

[umlaut]

Oh no, Erwin: you mentioned the "e"-word in relation to campaigns. I predict that CM purists will soon come down on you like a tons of bricks for nurturing such gamey thoughts.

Gaining "e" in campaigns is unrealistic. Period. Now go wash your keyboard with sulfuric acid.

(I totally agree with you, though. But please don´t tell anyone)

[mjkerner]

umlaut, that's a bad word here? How does the argument go...not enough time lapse for "e" to be gained??

[JonS]

Now that we have such a greater detailed depiction of units, I have never understood the objections to this since battles could easily be weeks or even months apart. It would really make one identify with and care about one's men in a very "realistic" RL manner.

And in those weeks and months the unit would be fighting other battles, and taking casulaties, and absorbing replacements, and losing men sick, and injured, and posted, and absorbing yet more replacements. In a few weeks or months, your unit would be completely unrecognisable. For a specific example of this, see Charles MacDonald's 'Company Commander' - he was wounded at the start of the Ardennes Offensive, and by the time he came back to his company - a couple of weeks later - he only recognised maybe three people.

The echelon that actually improves with experience is the command and coordination layer. Commanders get better at figuring out what tools they need for a job, and their staffs get better at integrating the combined arms team. In CM that layer is, of course, you. You getting better at the game will be reflected in better tool choice, and better combined arms integration.

[Paper Tiger]

It would be nice to have separate replacement levels for:

• Armor
  
• Light Armor
  
• Trucks and the like
  
• Infantry

e.g. after a battle the force could replace infantry losses, but not armor losses.

+1. But it's not likely to happen until we get a new UI. I'd also like to see a seperate parameter for re-equipping units that lose their MGs/mortars etc.

BTW, it is quite possible to have units gain experience between missions. The designer can alter the core unit's experience in each mission but it would need to be done in every mission thereafter as it won't 'stick'. I haven't done this yet as most of my campaigns take place within a very short span of time but if you were to have units fighting in a three4 month campaign, that's how I would do it. What I have done is have core units' morale increase or decline according to their level of success in earlier missions.

[womble]

I think having an option to increase a unit's experience between battles would be worthwhile. In a campaign like Courage and Fortitude, any survivors who started Over Hill, Down Dale as Green troops would, a fortnight or so later, at the gates of La Haye du Puits, be Regular. They have certainly "seen the elephant". 'Cept maybe L-coy if you take the route I took. They don't get into anything much

In campaigns that take place over longer timescales, the conceit is that you're playing out the pivotal, decisive moments. Yes a given platoon might take a few losses in the "incidental" battles and skirmishes between scenario 2 and scenario 3, but those aren't reflected in combat losses in the system as it stands AFAIK; a Veteran unit in scenario 2 will still be Veteran in 3 (even, I think, if the platoon has largely been gutted and replaced, but that could be a misconception, and isn't really relevant). The casualties 'in between' aren't considered 'significant' or the encounter would have been included in the campaign.

Given that each individual in every unit has, AIUI, their own experience (Vet, Green, whatever), Leadership, Motivation, Fitness, Morale and Suppression status, it wouldn't seem too out of the ball park to set a framework within which some of the soft settings could change in between scenarios.

[winkelried]

Given that each individual in every unit has, AIUI, their own experience (Vet, Green, whatever), Leadership, Motivation, Fitness, Morale and Suppression status, it wouldn't seem too out of the ball park to set a framework within which some of the soft settings could change in between scenarios.

+1 to this - would be nice to have this together with selective replacements. I think you often won't need this, but there are certain situations, where it would add a good touch of realism.

[Erwin]

JonS: "In a few weeks or months, your unit would be completely unrecognisable."

I completely agree that from what I know of this campaign, in RL that would be true. Of course RL happens to be 99% boring.

Fortunately... CM is a GAME.

In an ideal world there should be an option for milpro purists to have things as "realistic" as possible, and an option for gamers to have more fun with their troops shepherding them along, getting to know some of them at least, even taking them out of the line for TRAINING like in Matrix's monster "Pacific War" game.

Quite possibly the above is not practicable with the resources that BF has. But, I don't see why those of us who crave these features (that are well-loved in other successful games) should not be able to dream and speculate about experience improvements (or degradation due to massive casualties) as well as medals, promotions etc... without being the objects of the Spanish Inquisition (which nobody apparently ever expects).

[JonS]

Fortunately... CM is a GAME.

And I have no issue with adding stuff on that basis, as long as it's recognised as the completely unrealistic, gamey element it is.

Unfortunately, all too many discussions in this start from the premise that 'real units really get better over time' when it's actually more like 'real units rarely get better over time.' This thread is an example.

[Erwin]

I don't know enuff about how units improved in WW2 to seriously disagree with you JonS. But, we know that some units were much better than others. So, how did that come about?

I am in the camp that if it's fun and "feels realistic" (verisimilitude - my favorite wargame word) as opposed to being actually realistic but less fun, then I say go with the more fun option.

There should be room for both ideologies.

[womble]

... 'real units rarely get better over time.'

For this statement to have meaning you'll have to define 'better' and the scale of the unit you're talking about. I'm pretty sure some of the divisions assigned to D-Day were assigned because they were 'experienced' in action in previous theatres. It's probably right that, on the whole, replacements diluted the individual average experience as fast as it was gained, but organisations get experienced, and there will be pockets of troops that have learned faster, where losses are lower and where experience levels will be higher than the organisational average.

Would you argue that any of the troops coming 'intact' off Omaha were still Green?

For my part, I'm not arguing for anything cheesy like "You start with Conscripts in June '44 and will end up with Elites by the time you reach Berlin". I'd like to see a framework where:

• time passing turns Conscripts to Green as their sergeants instill in the field those reactions that basic training has already given to Green troops.
  
• Green get to Regular in one or two combats if they've been under fire (Conscripts might skip straight to Regular, if they've seen combat in the time it takes for them to get to Green)
  
• Regular to Veteran would take surviving another few firefights, and actually having taken a shot at an enemy, possibly even require a given number of 'Combat Victories'.
  
• Veteran to Crack would probably take more battles than a campaign designer would like to have to make, a decent length of time and a 'background' of being pulled out of the line for extra training, all the while taking only light casualties, and most of those from the 'new boys' who haven't learnt to keep their heads down yet. Likewise Crack to Elite, and getting to Elite would probably require no major defeats and a lot of large victories along the way. Neither of these 'steps' really fits the scope of CMBN, but once we've got 11 months' worth of CMx2 WW2 stuff, a really long campaign following some 'Veteran' Rangers or Commandos from D-Day to the Elbe could see them getting to Elite rating, maybe.
  

With individual soldiers' experience being recorded, presumably being averaged in some way to come to a team/squad/vehicle rating, loss of unit aggregate experience by replacement of casualties with less experienced personnel would be organically represented. It might add an extra level of complication if you could specify the training level of replacements - I get the impression that some units only took replacements who were already 'veterans'. In some ways it's all a bit pointless, since your 'average' outcome for the populations of games would be that replacements diluted, as I've said, the unit's experience, but there are two ways I can see in which it would change things a bit:

• a 'better than average' result, in terms of victories and casualty level would see Green troops quickly becoming Regular and Regulars eventually graduating to Veteran. Of course the converse would be that getting hammered and then receiving Green replacements might reduce your Veteran squads to Green, even if there are a few survivors.
  
• individual pTruppen which survive several battles will improve, even if their squad's rating is overall still Green.
  

Worth it in programming man-hours? Not my call, but I think it'd be nice to see.

[winkelried]

Worth it in programming man-hours? Not my call, but I think it'd be nice to see.

an interesting approach to work on two levels of detail - the current showing the unit (squad, tank etc) and the individual soldier. makes sense from my point of view. i think we should be able to parametrize in the campaign definition file.

one additional point - what would be an interesting addition would be forks in the campaign depending on a decision made by the player. currently you need to create a small dummy scenario to let the player decide between two options (eg attacking with TF 1 or with TF 2). It would be nice to select the fork with a simple popup configured in the campaign file.

[Splinty]

A lot of what Womble says above makes sense to me, especially his point about waiting until we have enough modules available to cover most of the NW European theater time frame. I think the player could simulate experience gained in shorter time frames by increasing the leadership modifiers of some HQ elements. A way of allowing the player to do this him\her self between missions would be pretty cool.

[umlaut]

Great post, Womble

+1

[nik mond]

It would be nice to have separate replacement levels for:

• Armor
  
• Light Armor
  
• Trucks and the like
  
• Infantry
  

e.g. after a battle the force could replace infantry losses, but not armor losses.

One work around for this would be to have the armoured units as CORE so the attrition would affect them. But the infantry support would not be core units and just manually replicated into each battle by the designer, perhaps including pre-cooked percetage losses. Also these replicated units could be renamed using the same name from battle to battle so the player would have a sense of continuity through out the campaign. So that is do-able as it stands now.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Would you argue that any of the troops coming 'intact' off Omaha were still Green?

First of all, I agree with your post and this isn't a rebuttal, just a response to the above referenced statement.

Anyway, a lot of the troops that came off Omaha did absolutely nothing but cower until the movers and shakers had cleared enough Germans so that troops could advance off the beach itself.

Now, some part of the troops involved in any battle don't do anything but try to stay alive until its over, but I think that was especially true of troops in their first combat.

Just my .02 on green invasion troops still being green.

[womble]

First of all, I agree with your post and this isn't a rebuttal, just a response to the above referenced statement.

Anyway, a lot of the troops that came off Omaha did absolutely nothing but cower until the movers and shakers had cleared enough Germans so that troops could advance off the beach itself.

Now, some part of the troops involved in any battle don't do anything but try to stay alive until its over, but I think that was especially true of troops in their first combat.

Just my .02 on green invasion troops still being green.

All fair enough, and points up another thing: what exactly is it that takes a soldier fresh out of Basic and turns them from Green to Regular.

My opinion (and that's all it is) is that the experience of being under fire, and doing at least something right (surviving) is most of the difference between Green and Regular, at this stage of the war. Equally, it might be the difference between 'standing' units with most of its personnel having several years of peacetime training in soldiering and freshly-trained volunteers/conscripts (it seems to me that "Conscript" troops in the game are meant to not even have the benefit of a few weeks' basic; perhaps that's a misapprehension).

[Erwin]

It would seem reasonable that it would be easy and relatively quick to go from Conscript or Green to Regular, but after that fewer would make it to Vet (unless a special unit like airborne, engineers, snipers, recon etc) and very few would get better after that.

It should be quite a rare occurrence to have a unit or leader make it to Crack (unless the unit starts at that level), let alone to become an Elite (Audie Murphy, Skorzeny, Mikey Wittmann etc.)

But, as a means to really get you to identify with your men and handle them like they were precious rather than the anonymous cannon fodder they tend to be now would take this game to a new high.

[womble]

It would seem reasonable that it would be easy and relatively quick to go from Conscript or Green to Regular, but after that fewer would make it to Vet (unless a special unit like airborne, engineers, snipers, recon etc) and very few would get better after that.

I can certainly see that there's an element of training required in the development of Crack troops from "combat" veterans. I don't think it's possible to make a 'veteran' (lowercase 'v') without combat experience, sortof by definition. The word 'elite', for me, carries with it connotations of attributes that would, AIUI, be better represented by Motivation, Fitness and Leadership stats. I think a campaign 'experience' treatment would need to include the other attributes, and details determined by someone who understands where the various attributes act on the game.

It should be quite a rare occurrence to have a unit or leader make it to Crack (unless the unit starts at that level), let alone to become an Elite (Audie Murphy, Skorzeny, Mikey Wittmann etc.)

There's another interesting point: all the "Elite" people you list are individuals. Which would be how, I think, it would come out in a long campaign most of the time: a limited number of individual pTruppen would survive from battle 1 to battle n, and they'd be the ones who might develop into 'Elite's. Their squad/tank etc would still be Veteran (an average, dragged up by Our Hero's status) say, but that individual might do the odd 'incredible' thing. It might mean that tank crews (handled with care) could aspire to the higher levels, as they live or die as a unit, more often than infantry teams.

But, as a means to really get you to identify with your men and handle them like they were precious rather than the anonymous cannon fodder they tend to be now would take this game to a new high.

Indeed. Though if I identified with them any more, I don't know if I could send 'em in to fight at all! I know I'm being more cavalier with their lives in the 'sideplay' of the scenarios in Courge and Fortitude I didn't play on my end-to-end runthrough.

[Erwin]

Like in RL afaik, taking lots of losses whether WW2 or Vietnam led to a callous attitude by the survivor vets towards the newbies.

I noticed that myself after the horrendous losses of "School of Hard Knocks" that it was easier to accept casualties after that.

[JonS]

For this statement to have meaning you'll have to define 'better' and the scale of the unit you're talking about.

Just so.

I'm pretty sure some of the divisions assigned to D-Day were assigned because they were 'experienced' in action in previous theatres.

True, but there's two points here. Probably more than two, actually.

Firstly; and somewhat obviously, CM doesn't model the divisional level. At best, you the player, or more likely you the scenario designer, is as close as CM gets to divisional level.

Secondly; the difference between combat novices and the experienced divisions bought back from the Med wasn't all that great, and there is a reasonably convincing line of argument that at least some of the units bought back under performed, at least in terms of what was expected of them.

Thirdly; the British - and the US to a degree I think - deliberately broke up some of the units bought back from the Med and scattered their constituent bns around to create a more homogeneous army. Certainly, the Armd Bdes the British bought back saw experienced bns posted out to 'green' bdes, and green 'bns' posted in. Similarly, the 82nd Airborne in Normandy was a quite division to the one that had fought in the Med.

Fourthly; the units bought back had suffered reasonably substantial casualties in the Med, and had large injections of 'green' men before they saw combat again in Normandy. The difference between them and the 'home' divisions (those that had never been out of the UK) was that the commanders and staffs were better at their jobs because they'd done it a lot, and because they'd done it against a live enemy, as I noted in an earlier post. This answers your question, Vergeltungswaffe. That's borne out by the experience of 52nd (Lowland) Division and 1st Airborne Division. In both cases it was noted that the quality of the staff work in these divisions was of a markedly lower level than the divisions that had been in action since June/July. It's easy to write off staffwork as mere bumf, but good staffwork is the difference between a hot meal and no meal, the difference between a fireplan that actually supports an attack and one that just wastes ammo, the difference between regular showers and fresh clothes and cold wet squaddies, sufficient ammo, the right proportions of arms in a combined arms team, and orders that are incisive and clear rather than ones that waffle and leave everyone more confused than they were to start with.

Fifthly; it is you, as the player, that represents the corporate knowledge of the commanders and their staffs. It is YOUR skill, knowledge, and experience that makes your soldiers perform better or worse. That's why the winners of tourneys - like Rumblings of War - are generally acclaimed as being worthy winners. Their sense of timing, ability to generate violence at the right time and place, their sequencing, and their use of tools is just that much better. It's not about whether 2nd Squad in 4 Platoon is +2 or -1, it's how you, as their commander, use them that matters.

It's probably right that, on the whole, replacements diluted the individual average experience as fast as it was gained, but organisations get experienced ...

I'd like to see a framework where:

• time passing turns Conscripts to Green as their sergeants instill in the field those reactions that basic training has already given to Green troops.

and when good ole Sarge becomes a casualty himself?

• Regular to Veteran would take surviving another few firefights, and actually having taken a shot at an enemy, possibly even require a given number of 'Combat Victories'.
  
• Veteran to Crack would probably take more battles than a campaign designer would like to have to make, a decent length of time and a 'background' of being pulled out of the line for extra training, all the while taking only light casualties, and most of those from the 'new boys' who haven't learnt to keep their heads down yet.

That's a long list of 'IFs,' and yet it still overlooks combat exhaustion.

Do we worry about combat exhaustion, or do we assume experience is a one-way ratchet that only sees troops getting better?

Furthermore, there is a fairly obvious cheat here: bleed out any non-core units in every battle so your carefully nurtured core force will steadily gain pseudo-experience without actually doing anything in the battles in which it appears.

With individual soldiers' experience being recorded, presumably being averaged in some way to come to a team/squad/vehicle rating,

Well, now you are talking about some fairly major changes to the way the game handles units. Tracking individual's experience just isn't done currently, AFAIK.

Worth it in programming man-hours? Not my call, but I think it'd be nice to see.

Not mine either, thankfully I'm ambivalent about it. Doing it plausibly would be a hell of a job, for little gain beyond what a determined campaign designer can already accomplish should they set their mind to it. Doing it game-ily would be much easier, but kinda cheesy.

Jon

[womble]

Just so.

I do appreciate the effort you've made in defining things. Good stuff!

True, but there's two points here. Probably more than two, actually.

Indubitably

Firstly; and somewhat obviously, CM doesn't model the divisional level. At best, you the player, or more likely you the scenario designer, is as close as CM gets to divisional level.

To be clear, the only reason I mentioned divisions is because it was the only level at which I was aware of any distinction being drawn between units when thinking of assigning them to operations of the scale of Overlord.

Secondly; the difference between combat novices and the experienced divisions bought back from the Med wasn't all that great, and there is a reasonably convincing line of argument that at least some of the units bought back under performed, at least in terms of what was expected of them.

Leaving aside the first part of that for the moment, just because they didn't achieve what was expected doesn't mean they didn't achieve more than the freshly-raised units.

Thirdly; the British - and the US to a degree I think - deliberately broke up some of the units bought back from the Med and scattered their constituent bns around to create a more homogeneous army. Certainly, the Armd Bdes the British bought back saw experienced bns posted out to 'green' bdes, and green 'bns' posted in. Similarly, the 82nd Airborne in Normandy was a quite division to the one that had fought in the Med.

This point seems to me to support the view that the command of the day percieved some benefit to putting veterans in with the new boys. An army that performs consistently whichever unit you have to hand to apply to the tactical situation is obviously easier to plan for, so 'stiffening' the new units with experienced troops makes sense. But if the 'vets from Italy' weren't better than the troops fresh out of Boot Camp, the reassignments wouldn't have been necessary to maintain homogeneity.

Fourthly; the units bought back had suffered reasonably substantial casualties in the Med, and had large injections of 'green' men before they saw combat again in Normandy.

If I understand correctly, this would mean either that the flow of replacements to Italy wasn't sufficient to keep up with combat losses, or that doctrine was not to replace losses til the units got back to Blighty. If I have it correctly, the general American policy was to trickle replacements in to keep existing units as close to full strength as possible, whereas other countries (UK and Germany, I think, as examples) tended to leave a unit understrength until it became combat-ineffective, then break it up/reassign it to a new formation.

I'm not arguing that scenarios involving unit names that were in Italy should have all the squads bumped to Veteran. That obviously would have been contrary to the policy of homogenisation.

The difference between them and the 'home' divisions (those that had never been out of the UK) was that the commanders and staffs were better at their jobs because they'd done it a lot, and because they'd done it against a live enemy, as I noted in an earlier post.

[snip]

Fifthly; it is you, as the player, that represents the corporate knowledge of the commanders and their staffs. It is YOUR skill, knowledge, and experience that makes your soldiers perform better or worse.

Certainly that's true on the battlefield. Perhaps it's also worth scenario designers considering what impact such above average staff work might have on the status of our pTruppen at battle start. Would they be better motivated? Would the inferior staff work mean that troops would be more likely to have low supply levels or even reduced Fitness? Would the example of their businesslike, active REMFs inspire platoon leaders to better leaderhip?

That's why the winners of tourneys - like Rumblings of War - are generally acclaimed as being worthy winners. Their sense of timing, ability to generate violence at the right time and place, their sequencing, and their use of tools is just that much better. It's not about whether 2nd Squad in 4 Platoon is +2 or -1, it's how you, as their commander, use them that matters.

As a measure of 'competence' with the game, entirely so. But that's not the only aspect of the game that people enjoy. A goodly chunk of the game features are there to inspire immersion in the game, and the community's thanks go to the modders who add further to that every day. For me, it's not about combat effectiveness, it's all about verisimilitude. Of course my perception of what seems real is different to others' and naturally influenced by "poplier meeja", but I do try and rein in any temptation to the egregious excesses of some storytellers. I don't think it can be denied, though, that some individuals, and groups of individuals were better fighters by the Bulge than they were when they set foot in France. For me, the story of those people is interesting at the scale of CMBN.

...and when good ole Sarge becomes a casualty himself?

Details, details! I don't know what the Russkies did, or the later german Conscript-class formations, but I'd sort of expect either a new sergeant from sergeant school (or from another unit where sarge was the only one with the sense to duck) to be assigned. Anyway, I thought it was dangerous for lower ranks (and distasteful to the upper ranks) to speculate on the origins of Sergeants?

That's a long list of 'IFs,'...

Yes, it is, consciously so.

...and yet it still overlooks combat exhaustion.

Do we worry about combat exhaustion, or do we assume experience is a one-way ratchet that only sees troops getting better?

Combat exhaustion is, it seems to me, to be a bigger issue than just whether a troop is Conscript - Vet - Elite. It covers an interaction between all the 'soft stats'. I note that the time axis only goes to 60 days, when the individual is apparently rated entirely combat-ineffective. Without digging into the source, I would want to know whether that's cumulative ever days, or days without rest not 'in combat', and if the latter, how many days 'off the line' would be needed to get a troop from 'day 30' back to 'day 10'. I would imagine that the effective rotation of formations through the grinder would be one of those things that the superior staff work learned in Africa and Italy would affect. It's certainly a factor that scenario designers should consider, and something to consider making provision for, should any 'progression' during a campaign be provided for in a future product.

Furthermore, there is a fairly obvious cheat here: bleed out any non-core units in every battle so your carefully nurtured core force will steadily gain pseudo-experience without actually doing anything in the battles in which it appears.

Most campaigns are solo affairs, so anyone doing this would only be cheating themselves. But if it makes them happy, where's the problem? If you wanted to discourage this as the designer, you could (with appropriate warning, perhaps in the Designer's Notes) assign the enemy high value 'Unit' objectives for the non-core units in a battle, so eroding the level of victory gained. In an ideal world, the game would be able to track the activity/exposure of a unit and assign 'progression value' to their participation in each battle. Now that would be a lot of work...

Well, now you are talking about some fairly major changes to the way the game handles units. Tracking individual's experience just isn't done currently, AFAIK.

I had gained the impression that each soldier's soft stats were individually assigned. Hence the times when one of your troops does a bunk before the others.

Not mine either, thankfully I'm ambivalent about it. Doing it plausibly would be a hell of a job, for little gain beyond what a determined campaign designer can already accomplish should they set their mind to it. Doing it game-ily would be much easier, but kinda cheesy.

Certainly, while cheese as a comestible is most excellent, I do not eat games (breathe and sleep them, perhaps, but not eat ) and cheesiness has no place at all in CMBN. It'd have to be done 'right' or nearly so, or not at all. Sadly, I think that doing it 'right' probably wouldn't be worth it, as its impact would be subtle and rarely noticed. Fire's much more dramatic Even animations for teams scaling tall obstacles is probably higher on the list of 'bang for programming-hour-buck'.

There would have been more smilies in this post, but there's a limit of 5 'images'...

[JonS]

To be clear, the only reason I mentioned divisions is because it was the only level at which I was aware of any distinction being drawn between units when thinking of assigning them to operations of the scale of Overlord.

The Brits bought back 3 or 4 divisions, a couple of armoured brigades, several artillery regiments, and quite a few miscellaneous units (at least one survey regiment, a corps HQ, probably some engineers, and so on).

Leaving aside the first part of that for the moment, just because they didn't achieve what was expected doesn't mean they didn't achieve more than the freshly-raised units.

No, that's a fair distinction. However, the 7th Armd Div and 51st (Highland) Div - two of the divs bought back from the Med - were both viewed at the time (fairly or not) as underperforming. The other regular combat div - 50th (Northumberland) - lead the assault on GOLD, but was broken up for reinforcements towards the end of the year. I don't know why they picked 50th rather than any of the other divs in 21st AG, but that they did doesn't really speak highly of it's combat effectiveness.

If I understand correctly, this would mean either that the flow of replacements to Italy wasn't sufficient to keep up with combat losses, or that doctrine was not to replace losses til the units got back to Blighty.

Whether the replacements join the units in the Med or in the UK is immaterial. The point is that the units bought back had suffered a turnover of casualties. The commanders and staffs were better at their jobs for the reasons given, but it does not follow that the privates and troopers were inherently 'better' soldiers just because the division they were in happened to have been in combat.

If I have it correctly, the general American policy was to trickle replacements in to keep existing units as close to full strength as possible, whereas other countries (UK and Germany, I think, as examples) tended to leave a unit understrength until it became combat-ineffective, then break it up/reassign it to a new formation.

This has nothing to do with CM but ...

The British 'system' was somewhat similar to the US system in that replacements were fed into units while in combat as a steady stream in order to keep the unit up to strength. There were significant differences though. The British were able to mostly maintain their regimental system, so a soldier would be recruited into a regiment, trained by that regiment, then sent to one of the regiment's battalions as a replacement. Reinforcement Holding Units in active theatres maintained 'stocks' of soldiers from each of the regiments, and would forward them on to combat units as required. Obviously this is highly inefficient, there is no good way to match casualties to replacement holdings, so you could easily end up in a situation where you have loads of Scots replacements sitting about, and simultaneously have several Irish regiments crying out for replacements. The system wasn't rigorously adhered to, though. In Italy I believe it was all but abandoned, while in NWE it became increasingly common for men to get drafted into the 'wrong' regiment. Sydney Jary, for example, wasn't a 'native' Light Infantryman. Unlike the US system, I believe that recovered wounded and injured would be streamed back into the unit which they came from, rather than being dumped into a generic replacement pool for assignment anywhere.

For the Germans, technically each division was supposed to have a replacement and training battalion. This seems to be broadly similar to the British system, but at the divisional rather than regimental level. A man would receive generic training at the national level, then drafted into a division and sent to its training and replacement battalion where he would receive final and specialist training, as well as induction into divisional SOPs and ethos, before being assigned to a combat battalion. Quite a few divisions in Normandy did have a T&R bn, but the scale of combat completely overwhelmed their ability to maintain the required rate. Often the T&R Bns got sucked into a direct combat role themselves, which might solve an immediate tactical problem, but always compromised the longevity of the division. The T&R bns were, I think, a reflection of the German’s emphasis on unit cohesion. I'm not sure whether the policy of burning out units then sending them to the rear was also a reflection of that, or a stop gap because of the failure of the T&R bns, or a reflection of national policy/Hitler's predilection for having greater numbers of understrength divisions, rather than fewer fully capable divisions.

I'm not arguing that scenarios involving unit names that were in Italy should have all the squads bumped to Veteran. That obviously would have been contrary to the policy of homogenisation.

Homogenisation was at the bn level, not down at individual squads. From memory, 4th Armd Bde came back to the UK, where it promptly lost two of the bns that had been with it in the Med. I think one of those bns went to the armd bde of 11th Armd Div, and the other went to one of the independent armd bdes that had been training in the UK. In return 4th Armd Bde received two 'green' bns. There was, AFAIK, no mixing at levels lower than that.*

Of course my perception of what seems real is different to others' and naturally influenced by "poplier meeja", but I do try and rein in any temptation to the egregious excesses of some storytellers.

Yup. Perceptions are tricky things. Look at the bocage threads for a good example of wildly divergent perceptions. Making one group happy will, almost by definition, make all the other groups unhappy.

I don't think it can be denied, though, that some individuals and groups of individuals were better fighters by the Bulge than they were when they set foot in France. For me, the story of those people is interesting at the scale of CMBN.

I won't bother denying it (though I don't necessarily agree) but I think that any improvement in the competence of a few individuals would be totally swamped by the effect of improving competence of commanders and staffs. Look at 90th Infantry Division - they were a sack of poos in Normandy. Any improvement of individuals in the first weeks ashore was utterly unable to overcome the stifling incompetence of those above them. But with the replacement of a few key individuals the performance of the division was completely turned around, and by the end of the year it was one of the star performers.

Details, details! I don't know what the Russkies did, or the later German Conscript-class formations, but I'd sort of expect either a new sergeant from sergeant school (or from another unit where sarge was the only one with the sense to duck) to be assigned.

So you have a green sargent trying to train green troops - that improves things ... how?

Combat exhaustion is, it seems to me, to be a bigger issue than just whether a troop is Conscript - Vet - Elite.

Absolutely. It's an insanely complex - but incontrovertibly important - topic. My point in bringing it up is that the progression is not Conscript - Green - Regular - Vet - Crack - Elite. It's Conscript - Burnt-Out-Wreck-of-a-Man (BOW). Or Conscript - Regular - BOW. Or Reg - Vet - BOW. Within every section in every platoon in every battalion there'd be a mix, with most of the guys in the first 0-10 days part of the graph, and increasingly fewer as you advance along the curve. And the exact mix in each section would be constantly changing due to battle experiences (which would both improve and decrease the effectiveness of the overall unit), losses (which would both improve and decrease the effectiveness of the overall unit), and replacements (which would usually decrease the effectiveness of the overall unit, but simultaneously increase it's propensity to take risks).

I would want to know whether that's cumulative ever days, or days without rest not 'in combat', and if the latter, how many days 'off the line' would be needed to get a troop from 'day 30' back to 'day 10'.

AIUI, there is some ability for some men to move to the left on the graph, given time, rest, care, etc., but it's limited, especially in the context of WWII.

Most campaigns are solo affairs, so anyone doing this would only be cheating themselves. But if it makes them happy, where's the problem?

Oh, nothing. But someone at BFC still has to code it all up, and if it's just going to be abused, why bother?

I had gained the impression that each soldier's soft stats were individually assigned. Hence the times when one of your troops does a bunk before the others.

I'm not so sure about that. I think there is some degree of individual tracking of curretn state (who cowers, who runs, who surrenders), but I'd be very hesitant about supposing it was any more complex than that.

Fire's much more dramatic Even animations for teams scaling tall obstacles is probably higher on the list of 'bang for programming-hour-buck'.

Indubitably.

Jon

* except reasonable numbers of officers from across the divisions in the UK were sent out to the Med in 1943 to gain combat experience there. The plan was they'd be in the Med for 6-12 months, then take their learnings and experience back to their original units. t sort of worked, except that not surprisingly reasonable numbers of them were killed and wounded while in the Med, and some of the remainder preferred to stay with the unit they'd been posted to, rather than uprooting and going back to the UK. I've also come across cases of officers being posted out of experienced units and into green units to give them a leavening of experience.

[Erwin]

"Fourthly; the units bought back had suffered reasonably substantial casualties in the Med, and had large injections of 'green' men before they saw combat again in Normandy."

Earlier you correctly say we shouldn't be discussing things at the Divisional level. But is there evidence that they split up platoons and mixed everyone up at the individual soldier level?

I would expect that one had a wide mix of experienced squads if not platoons and Green guys. CM1 depicted that rather well.

And in any case, CMBN is NOT RL. It is a GAME designed for entertainment. The cookie-counter feel of all squads/platoons in CMBN works against one's efforts to ID with one's guys. Even so, the fact is that units DID improve during a campaign in RL. They did not come out of Normandy all the same level of experience. Not sure why this seems like a controversial concept.